


Five for Silver, Six for Hell

by JJGrace42



Series: Erstwhile Universe [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Tony has a daughter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2019-09-28 18:06:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 48,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17187818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JJGrace42/pseuds/JJGrace42
Summary: "Let me explain to you how the world works. It's an economy, run on exchanges and bargains and agreements. You give something and then get something back. You being here? That's me getting something." "And what do I get, then?" "You get to live." OC insert/Tony has a daughter fanfic. Rated M for violence, strong themes, and language. Second part of the Erstwhile Universe.





	1. Beware (for I am fearless)

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter title comes from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The title of this fic is from a classic nursery rhyme called “One for Sorrow.”

"Pull up the Germany footage again, JARVIS."

The video appeared a few feet in front of her, just past the holographic projections of the blueprints she was manipulating. "If I may, Danielle," JARVIS said. "I do believe this is bordering on obsessive."

"Is it?" she asked distantly. "Explode the engine for me, please. I need a closer look." Danielle reached out and scratched Bacon under his chin. He stretched, purring loudly.

"Of course."

The hologram expanded in front of her, the engine coming apart in pieces. She glanced up past it at the grainy security footage. "The guy in the horns. You're still not going to tell me who he is?"

"I am not allowed to share any details of Sir's current predicament."

"Predicament?" She frowned and waved a hand through her blueprints, dispersing them. "That's an interesting choice of words. Is he okay, J?"

"I am not allowed to share any details of—"

"JARVIS," Danielle said, voice cutting through his. "Is Dad alive?"

"He is alive."

She sighed shakily. "Thank god. And there's nothing else you can tell me?"

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she mumbled, staring at the security footage as it started over again. "What is that guy using? I've never seen someone be able to materialize something like that. It's all just theory."

JARVIS's voice was low when he responded. "Some things just defy explanation."

"Don't be ridiculous. Everything has an explanation. Sometimes it just hasn't been found yet. That's what science is for." She frowned at the blast from the staff the man was holding. "See, when I want to know something, I figure it out. And what I want to know right now is who the hell that guy is and how he's doing what he's doing."

"I do believe this is a point at which I should criticize you for your—"

Danielle froze. She frowned and paused the video with a wave of her hand. "JARVIS?"

"Someone has arrived on the roof. I am contacting Sir now. I suggest you remain here for the time being."

Danielle snatched up the gun on her workbench. The sudden movement made Bacon squeak and he scrambled to his feet, purring stopping immediately. "Do you know who it is?" she asked, checking over the rounds in her magazine before sliding it into her gun.

"There are two people. They are establishing something on the roof of the building, but I'm not sure—" JARVIS paused. When he spoke again, his tone was clipped. "I am locking down the workshop for safety."

"J?" Danielle flinched a little as the metal security doors came down around the walls of the room. "JARVIS, who is it?"

"His name is Loki and he is the man whose identity you have been asking about since the incident in Germany. Please remain here. Sir has informed his team and is on his way."

"Thanks, J. What are they setting up on the roof?"

"I am not allowed to—"

"Goddammit, JARVIS! Tell me what's going on. I get that there's so top secret governmental stuff here, but from my perspective there is a _terrorist_ setting up camp on top of where I live and I want to know what's going on." The silence stretched longer than she was comfortable with. "JARVIS, I swear that if you don't tell me what's happening—"

"There is a machine containing the Tesseract currently being set up on the roof. It is the belief of your father and his team that our opponent has plans to use the Tesseract to open a portal in order to unleash and alien army upon the world. I believe that portal is to open above Stark Tower."

Danielle stared at the paused footage, mulling over what JARVIS had just dropped on her. The video was frozen on the staticky image of the horned man standing over a crowd of people, scepter raised. She took a shaky breath and set down her gun. As she pulled her hair out of it's messy braid and began tying it tightly back up, she said, "J, how far out is Dad?"

"Approximately thirty-seven minutes."

"Okay." She opened the locked box on her work bench and pulled out several clips, shoving them into the pockets of her shorts. She picked up her gun again. "Lift the lockdown on the workshop, please."

"I really must protest—"

"You're telling me that some maniac is about to declare war on New York city using an artifact from World War Two and that the closest person who can stop it is still over a half hour away, but you still expect me to just sit by and do nothing?" She glared at the ceiling. "Lift the lockdown."

He said nothing. But she heard the muted whir of gears and the metal walls lifted. Danielle crouched down and petted back Bacon's ears. "Stay here where it's safe, okay, baby?" She smiled and kissed his forehead. Then she stood back up and retrieved her gun. "Are they all still on the roof?"

"As far as I am aware."

"Okay. Radio silence, now. If they hear the ceiling talking it could give away where I am."

She hadn't realized that the absolute absence of sound could sound so reluctant. Then JARVIS said, "I'll inform Sir. You will not hear from me until his arrival."

"Thanks, J." She hesitated and stepped towards her father's work bench. Danielle slid her left hand into the Iron Man gauntlet sitting there. It adjusted to fit around her hand and she flexed her fingers. Satisfied, she pushed open the door and took a deep breath. Instead of the elevator, she took toward the stairs. She started climbing them two at a time.

Somewhere above her, a door slammed and was followed by the sound of footsteps. Danielle caught her breath and pressed up against the wall. She began counting her heartbeats as the seconds past. Twenty-six heartbeats later, another door slammed. The footsteps were gone. She took a deep breath and continued her upward climb. She reached the exit to the roof and took a deep breath, gauntlet and gun both at the ready. Two people, and it sounded like one had left the roof for the building. She would just hope to god that Loki had been the one to leave.

Danielle shoved open the door and kept her back to the wall as she stepped out, weapons raised. She immediately zeroed in on the man hunched over the large, pulsing machine. "Shut it down and step away!"

The man straightened and turned. She caught her breath, staring at how unnaturally sharp and blue his eyes were. That wasn't right. "I said shut it down!"

"You don't understand!" He was grinning widely, expression twisted into something manic. "It's beautiful! This is the beginning of everything! Just wait, just wait. You'll see!"

"I don't want to see jack shit except for you turning it off." She took a deep breath and the gauntlet started to hum as she powered it up. "I'm going to give you until the count of three. One—"

"What a juvenile method."

She whipped around, heart leaping into her throat. She fired the repulsor and the man leaned to the side to avoid it. He smiled, though it was chilling and didn't reach his sharp blue eyes. Eyes all too similar to those of the man by the machine. "What do we have here?" he asked curiously.

Danielle squeezed the trigger and also fired off another repulsor blast. The man avoided them and then his staff came up. Danielle ducked it, but then it caught her in the legs. She gasped as her ankle wrenched and she hit the ground. Gravel dug into her face and she spit out blood as she pushed herself up. A hand closed around her neck. It dragged her up and her weight began pulling her down. She writhed in his grip and started to bring up her gun. He slapped her hand away with his staff and smiled. "We can't have that, now, can we?" The scepter came up and its cold tip touched her chest. "Why don't I teach you how to behave?”

* * *

 

"I swear, if there's one hair out of place on my kid's head—"

"Sir, you need to focus."

Tony grit his teeth, coming to a stop above his Tower. "Update me, J."

"The barrier is pure energy. It's unbreachable."

"I got that." Tony dropped his gaze to the balcony below, where Loki was standing and smiling up at him. And behind him Danielle stood blank faced with a gauntlet on one hand and a gun in the other. She wasn't dressed for a fight. No, she was dressed in shorts and a crop top and his chest tightened at the dirt staining her skin and the blood painted across her face. She wasn't even wearing shoes, but one of her socks had gone from white to a splotchy red. "Plan B."

"The Mark VII is not ready to be deployed."

Tony tore his gaze from his daughter and landed. "Skip the spinning rims." He started forward and his machines came out, removing his suit piece by piece. "We're on the clock."

"Of course, Sir."

Tony looked to his right. Loki turned and started inside, Danielle just a half-second behind him. He faced straight ahead. He had to get this right and he couldn't let her distract him. That distraction could spell death for her.

Almost the moment he was inside, Loki called, "Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity."

"No. I'm too pissed and I passed that point a while ago. I'm going to threaten you, actually." Tony stepped down the stairs to the bar. "Drink?"

Loki looked vaguely amused. "Stalling me won't change anything."

"No, no. Not stalling. Threatening. What about you, Dani? Drink?"

She stared straight at him. "I'm not thirsty. Besides, I'm underage and you know it."

The fact that it was said in her voice with her familiar biting tone and yet without the faintest hints of _her_ in her expression hurt more than anything else ever could have. He started pouring himself a glass. "You sure? I'm having one." He took a sip and then set it down, reaching for the first bracelet.

Loki glanced to the side at Danielle and then stepped past her to look out the window. She turned her head to watch him but didn't move from her spot. Loki switched his scepter from one hand to the other. "The chitauri are coming and nothing will change that. What have I to fear?"

Tony locked on the second bracelet. "The Avengers."

That made Loki pause and he looked back at Tony. Danielle's gaze, however, didn't leave the man.

"That's what we call ourselves," Tony said, picking his glass back up. "A team, I guess. Earth's mightiest heroes."

"Yes, I've met them." Loki had taken on a mocking tone. As Tony came around the bar, Loki stepped forward and looked almost amused.

"Yeah, takes us a while to get any traction. I'll give you that one. But let's do a head count. Your brother, the demi-god; a super soldier, a living legend who kinda lives up to the legend; a man with . . . breath-taking anger management issues; a couple of master assassins. And you, big fella. You've managed to piss off every single one of them."

"That was the plan." Loki stepped forward until they were face to face. "And since my plan is going so splendidly, I've decided to indulge a little. I have one Stark already."

Tony couldn't help the glance he threw towards Danielle. She had both arms raised, gauntlet and gun alike pointed at him.

"I think," Loki mused, "I would rather like to have the set." And with that said, he tapped his scepter against Tony's chest.

Tony felt more than heard the clink of the staff against his arc reactor. Confusion flickered across Loki's face. The scepter tapped again. Loki's expression darkened. "That normally works."

"Well, performance issues, you know. Not uncommon. One out of five-" He grunted in alarm, hands flying up, when Loki's grip closed around his neck. The floor disappeared from underneath him only for him to slam into hit a moment later. He coughed and climbed up. "JARVIS," he muttered. "Anytime now."

The moment he was on his feet, Loki had grabbed him by the throat again. "You will all fall before me," the man growled.

"Deploy." Tony gasped out. "Deploy!"

And at that moment, he went flying through the window. He screamed and flipped through the air before stabilizing, limbs spread out. "C'mon, JARVIS," he muttered, voice lost in the air he was rushing through. "C'mon."

He heard a beeping and saw the red scanning his wrists and some of the tightness in his chest let up, but not all of it. Metal locked around his arms and he breathed a sigh of relief as the familiar suit enclosed his body and he was once again in control. He fired his repulsors, reversing his fall and flying back upward.

As he reached the broken glass, he scowled and stared inside at where Loki was barking orders and Danielle was turning towards the elevator. "Oh, and there's one other person you pissed off!" he yelled. Loki turned, raising his scepter. Tony's voice grew dark. "And he doesn't like it when someone messes with his little girl." He fired his gauntlets and the blast hit Loki, sending him flying backwards.

Tony only had a split second of satisfaction before a blast hit him, knocking him backwards. "What the fuck!"

"Sir, Danielle is still under Loki's control," JARVIS explained. "As such, she has decided to attack his enemy: you."

"Shit!" Tony dodged the next blast. "Dani! C'mon, Dani, it's your old man!"

Another blast.

"C'mon, please—" He yelped as the next blast caught his shoulder. "Fuck no." He dove straight forward, inwardly aching, and hit her head on, grabbing her in his arms. They tumbled across the floor and he let her go instead of dragging her with him as he slammed into the wall. Coughing, he got back up. He lifted his faceplate and raised his gauntlets. "Danielle! It's me!"

Her expression was focused and familiar, making her look like she was concentrating on a boxing match with Natasha or a particularly difficult piece of music rather than trying to kill her father. Another blast. And another.

"No, no, no," he muttered. "Alright, that's it. Sorry, baby girl!" At his simple command, the suit peeled away and propelled him forward. He slammed his fist into her face at the same moment as a shot rang in his ears. Danielle dropped back, smashing into the ground and her gun tumbling from her hands. Tony dropped beside her, gasping and gripping his side. He stared at her, but she wasn't responsive. "JARVIS?"

"She's breathing, Sir. Are you hurt?"

Tony looked down and lifted his hand from his side. He hissed in pain, staring at the gash ripped through his shirt and skin. "Just a flesh wound," he assured his AI. He glanced back. "Where'd Rudolph go?"

"He seems to have escaped."

Tony stumbled to his feet. "No shit. Alright, c'mon, Dani." He dragged her up by under her arms and pulled her to the steps. "Sorry. Daddy would love to get you somewhere better, but he's got a world to save right now," he murmured. He leaned down and kissed her bloody forehead. "I'll be back quick. Promise." His side ached as he straightened back up. "JARVIS?"

The suit practically slammed into him and reformed around him. "Are we off to kill a god, Sir?"

"You bet your digital ass we are.”

* * *

 

For just three seconds it felt like waking up to her natural circadian rhythm. And then her body started screaming. Danielle choked out a breath and found herself choking on bile instead. She lurched forward and tumbled downward, hands scraping against something sharp. She retched, back heaving. Her throat and mouth burned and she fell back, something digging into her back. She reached up to wipe her mouth only to find her hand heavier than normal.

Danielle stared at the gauntlet encasing her hand. Why did she have the gauntlet? Her dad was going to kill her. He was—

Oh.

She'd tried to kill him.

And just like that, she was hunched over and hurling again. Her mind spun, trying to catch up. Blue eyes, shooting at Iron Man, Loki's scepter against her chest, the man on the roof, the machine that was—

The machine.

Danielle stared out at the absolutely destroyed room. "JARVIS," she croaked. "JARVIS, what's happening?"

There was no answer.

"JARVIS?"

"Danielle!" Tony's voice came booming through the ceiling. "Thank god. Okay, get to the workshop, okay? JARVIS will put it on lockdown."

She struggled up. "The . . . the Tesseract. Is it still on the roof?"

"Oh, no. No. I know exactly what you're thinking. Go to the workshop, Dani! Go to the—" He cut off with a grunt and then a plethora of swears. "Goddammit! Cap! I need help up on Ninth!"

Danielle stumbled forward and picked up her gun. She limped towards the elevator and hit the button. It didn't respond. "What— JARVIS, open the elevator."

"I can't do that, Danielle. You need to go to the workshop."

She scowled and turned for the stairs, leaning on the wall for support.

"Danielle—"

"Screw off, JARVIS." She shoved open the door and started dragging herself up the stairs. Her chest burned and her ankle just didn't feel right, though she couldn't bring herself to look down. The door to the roof was ajar and she pulled herself through it. Her breath caught in her throat and she found herself staring at the rip in the sky. "Oh my god," she gasped.

Large beast after large beast was pouring through the tear, their moaning roars shaking her bones. Danielle swallowed and limped forward, gun up. "Shut it down," she ordered.

The man looked up, but this time his eyes weren't blue and his head was smeared with blood. His eyes went wide. "I wish I could. But the . . . . Loki's scepter. The energy."

She hesitated and then dropped her gun. "We need to shut it down."

"We can't."

"We have to!"

"The only way to would be to get the Tesseract out, and that barrier is impossible to get through."

She scowled and threw her eye across it. He was right. There weren't any weak spots except for the cube itself, well past the humming barrier. She screamed in frustration and slammed her left fist forward. Despite the gauntlet between herself and the barrier, she felt her hand and wrist give was just a little. She hit it again and again.

"You can't get through!" the man yelled. "It's impossible!"

Danielle ripped off the gauntlet, chest heaving. "Listen, in the last few hours I've been mind controlled, seen aliens, and tried to kill my own father. I am one hundred percent done being told what is and isn't possible because I don't think _anything_ is impossible at this point!" And then she slammed her hands right into the barrier, digging in to try to claw her way through.

Her skin hissed and she could feel it boiling and peeling. Danielle screamed but kept pressing her weight forward. Behind her, the man was shouting something but she couldn't hear anything over the ringing of her own ears. The pain was lancing up her arms and across her chest and between her ribs. She shrieked and was about to pull back when she felt it give. Just a little, but it gave.

It was hard to see and tears burned her eyes. She gave another scream and pushed again. One hand went through and the barrier burned up her arm. Someone was screaming, and she was pretty sure it was still her. She reached for the cube. Just a little bit farther. Just a little.

Her fingers closed across the cube and she jerked it from its spot.

The burning up her arm stopped and she stumbled back. But even though the barrier was gone, it had been replaced by the freezing heat in her hand and crawling through her faces. Blue burned itself into her retinas and she fell. Or was she still standing? She wasn't sure anymore. All she was sure about was the pain and the blood in her throat and the way her hand was scalding.

And then all she was sure of was that all she could see was black.

* * *

 

"If it's all the same to you, I'll have that drink now."

Tony surged forward, snarling out, "Where's my daughter?"

"Tony!" Natasha's hand closed around his bicep. "Beating it out of him won't do any good."

"The girl?" Loki leaned to the side and spat out some blood. "I have no idea."

Tony growled and fought against Natasha's grip only to have a super soldier's arm come around him and drag him back. "What did you do to my daughter, you fucker! Where is—"

"Sir!" JARVIS cut in.

Tony growled at Loki before cutting his gaze to the ceiling. "What?" he snapped.

Before JARVIS could respond, the elevator doors slid open and Selvig stumbled out, dragging a body with him. "Help! Help her! I don't know what— She touched it! She closed the portal and she touched the Tesseract and I don't know what's happening to her!"

He couldn't see the body's face, but Tony recognized the orange crop top, as stained and torn as it was. "Dani!" He pulled from his teammates' hold and raced forward. Behind him, he heard Cap order Barton to bind Loki. Tony dropped to his knees, broken glass digging through his jeans, and took Danielle into his arms from the doctor. There was barely an inch of her skin that wasn't stained red and he could have sworn that he saw the bone of her arms. Her eyes were open but glazed and she was staring blankly upwards at nothing, pupils blown wide. "No, no, no, no." He pressed his fingers against her neck, slipping against her bloody skin. He shuddered in relief when he felt a steady pulse.

"How is she?"

Tony looked up and it took a moment for him to manage to focus in on the woman crouch in front of him. "She's alive," he croaked. "We need to get her to a hospital."

Natasha stared at him and then her gaze flicked to the teen in his arms. "Okay." She rose to her feet. "Cap, you mind carrying her?"

The man looked confused and concerned as he stepped over and crouched down, reaching for Danielle. "Of course not."

Tony pulled back, drawing his arms protectively around his daughter. "I don't—"

"Tony." Natasha's voice grew sharp. "Let Steve take her. You're practically dead on your feet and you won't be doing her any favors if you pass out while holding her."

He stared at her and she nodded. He took a shaky breath and released his hold, letting Steve take her from his arms. Despite relinquishing her, he still made a sound of protest. Natasha was up against his side in an instant, arm curling around his waist. "C'mon, let's not fall behind. You need a visit to the hospital too."

"But—"

"I won't let her out of my sight, Stark. I promise."


	2. Are you ready? (no)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from The Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket.

"How is she?"

Tony jumped and the alarm clock he was working on tumbled from his lap, smashing into the floor and scattering wires and screws and tools everywhere. Tony stared at it for a long time. Then he sighed and looked up. "I didn't hear you come in."

Steve glanced aside, face red. "Sorry. I— JARVIS said you were up here in the penthouse and I came to talk to you. And the, uh . . . ." He gestured to the door of Danielle's room. "The door was open."

"Right. Right." Tony knelt down and started picking up the scattered pieces, ignoring the twinge of pain in his side. "No problem. Did you need something?"

"I wanted to know how she was doing," Steve said, looking towards the bed.

Tony took a deep breath, dumping the alarm clock and its various parts in the trash. "She's alive. I called again today since she hasn't woken up yet and they just said I'll have to wait. That they have no idea what happened to her, so they can't, uh, can't predict when she'll be back." Tony ran a hand through his hair. "But she's healing up pretty well."

"And do you?"

Tony looked at him, frowning. Steve stumbled over himself to clarify. "Do you know what happened to her?"

Tony stared at him. Then he waved towards the other armchair. "Sit down." Once he had done so, Tony sighed. "Best as I can tell, she absorbed the Tesseract."

"Absorbed—" Steve frowned and his glance slide to the pale, small figure nestled in the bed. "That's impossible, right?"

"Apparently not. She's now showing positive on every single machine that searches for the Tesseract. I don't know how she absorbed it or . . . . I don't know."

"But she's alive."

"She's alive," Tony murmured.

Steve nodded. He took a long, deep breath. "Thank you for letting us all stay here."

"Hmm. Well, we're a team now. Sorry the Tower is still half destroyed."

"Tony."

Tony jumped, looking towards the door. "Holy shit. Do I need to remind you guys that I have a heart condition?"

Natasha just raised an eyebrow. "I'll stay with her. You need to go eat, which I'm sure you've not done for a full day. And you need to shower, which I'm sure you've not done for at least three days."

"Natasha—"

"Go." She crossed her arms. "If she wakes up, JARVIS will let you know immediately." Natasha stepped aside as Tony finally conceded and left the room. She glanced towards Steve and he hesitated, rising to his feet. "JARVIS said he hasn't slept."

That made Steve pause. "Tony? Hasn't slept since when?"

"Not since he crashed at the hospital. So about seventy-eight hours. Why don't you recruit Clint and make sure Tony gets sleep. Duct tape him to his bed if you need to."

"That seems . . . extreme."

She raised an eyebrow. "I've known Stark for a couple years now. Trust me, it's not extreme. And if you don't force him to sleep then he'll stay awake until Danielle wakes up, which could be weeks." When she saw he was still hesitant, she softened her stance. "We're a team now. And your teammate is suffering and needs some support, even if that support comes in the form of a forced nap time on the behalf of his captain."

At that, Steve straightened. Those were terms he knew, terms he was comfortable with: support, team, captain. He brushed past her and left the room. Natasha closed the door and bypassed both chairs in favor of sitting on the end of the bed. "JARVIS, vitals?"

"Steady. There is no obvious scientific reason at this point for why Danielle hasn't woken up."

Natasha frowned, dropping a hand on where Danielle's foot was underneath the blankets. She rubbed circles on the girl's ankle. "You've gotta wake up, Kroshka. Your old man is gonna go crazy. And if he goes crazy, he's gonna drive me crazy."

Danielle's entire body jolted. Natasha paused. "JARVIS?"

"Her heart rate is increasing. I believe she's having a bad dream."

Natasha moved forward and pressed the back of her hand against Danielle's head. She got a flinch in response and a pained groan parted Danielle's lips. "Hey, Kroshka," Natasha murmured. "Take a deep breath. It's all going to be—"

And then a scream ripped from Danielle's throat and blue flashed through the room. Natasha was thrown back into the wall and she gasped brokenly. When she opened her eyes, it was to darkness. "JARVIS!"

"A fluctuation of Tesseract energy. All lightbulbs in the room have been shattered. There was tremendous force against the windows as well, but they survived. I have contacted Sir."

Natasha dragged herself up and winced, back aching. She stepped cautiously towards the bed. "Okay, Kroshka." She kept her voice low and comforting, like she did with Clint when he was panicking. "Let's not do that again."

"Do . . . what again?" a voice croaked out.

Natasha straightened. "Danielle. Are you awake?"

"Nat, what's going—" She sucked in a loud breath. "I'm gonna throw up."

"Hold on." Natasha felt for the bowl under the nightstand and picked it up. "JARVIS, lift the dim on the windows about ten percent. We don't want to blind her."

"Of course."

The window tint faded just enough to let a little light filter into the room. Natasha pressed the bowl into Danielle's shaking, bandaged arms and supported her as she struggled to sit up. "How do you feel?"

Danielle's response was to heave into the bowl. Her shoulders shuddered and Natasha curled her nose a little at the smell. But she rubbed the girl's back. Finally, Danielle collapsed against the cushions and Natasha took the bowl from her. The redhead took the rag sitting on the nightstand and gently wiped Danielle's mouth for her. As she moved to the girl's private bathroom and started rinsing out the bowl, Danielle rasped out, "I don't remember eating anything orange."

"You've been on a feeding tube. I believe you had turkey, sweet potatoes, and peaches for lunch."

"Oh." Danielle's eyes were shuttering closed, but then she snapped them open again. Her struggle to stay awake was obvious. "Thanksgiving in a blender bag," she mumbled. "Great."

The door opened suddenly and Tony fumbled to catch it before it hit the wall. His hair was sopping wet and his shirt was both damp and put on backwards and inside out, a clear indication that JARIVS had alerted him while the man had been in the shower. Natasha returned the bowl to its spot under the night stand and calmly said, "She's up."

"Dani," Tony breathed. He stepped forward until he was standing beside the bed. "How do you feel, baby?"

Danielle's eyes were only half open. "Like shit," she croaked out. And then a moment later she managed, "Sorry. Language."

And just like that, Tony started laughing. A full laugh, his head thrown back and his eyes tearing up. "You're okay." He choked the two words out like they were something he'd been waiting to say all his life. "I— Do you need anything? More blankets? Music? I can get you some—"

"Tony," Natasha reprimanded softly. "I think what she really needs is some more sleep."

"But—"

"Tony." Natasha laid a hand on his arm and glanced towards the bed. Danielle's eyes were already closed again and she'd returned to slumber. "Let's give her some space. Why don't you go finish your shower?"

"But—"

"Tony. She's okay. And when she wakes up again, maybe you should try being properly dressed.”

* * *

 

She spent seventeen minutes staring at the dark ceiling once she woke up. When she spoke, her dry lips cracked from disuse and she could taste iron. "JARVIS?" she whispered. "When is it?"

"May 8th, 2012. It is five fifteen in the morning. You have been unconscious for roughly three days, though you had about twelve minutes of consciousness on the 7th. You are in your room at the Tower in New York City."

She closed her eyes and took a shaky breath. "Lights up, please."

"Of course, Danielle."

She could see the light through her eyelids. When she opened her eyes, she squinted against the brightness. She dragged her gaze across herself, taking in the bandages wrapped around her arms. "It wasn't a nightmare, was it?"

"I'm afraid not."

"What happened to the Tesseract?"

JARVIS didn't answer right away and it was a little hard for her to breathe because she remembered the burning in her hand and could feel the uncomfortable hum beneath her skin. Finally, he said, "You seem to have absorbed it."

Another shaky breath. "Okay. I'd like some food."

"Who would you like me to contact? You will need to put on a boot for your ankle in order to walk, and I believe it was stored in the closet upon your return from the hospital."

She frowned. "Oh. Is that why my leg feels like it's on fire?"

"You suffered a compound fracture during your encounter with Loki. As it seems your absorption of the Tesseract has accelerated your healing somewhat, the doctor assured your father that you can walk on it as long as you use a boot."

"Right. I have . . . options for who to ask for help?"

"The Avengers have moved into the Tower during your time away."

"The— Update, please." It was growing uncomfortable just lying in her bed, but not knowing what was going on was far more uncomfortable.

"Whereas the Avengers Initiative only previously consisted of your father, now he has been joined by several others: Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner, Thor, and Steve Rogers."

She closed her eyes and wondered if the dream would be over when she opened them again. "Clint Barton?"

"An acquaintance of Agent Romanoff's, I believe."

"I thought Bruce Banner was missing. On behalf of that big green problem of his, right?"

"He seems to have returned," JARVIS said, sounding amused. "Thor is Loki's brother, though is arguably far friendlier. And yes, Steve Rogers."

She opened her eyes. "Can you let Dad know I'm up? But I'd prefer Nat's help. Um, I think I need a shower."

"Of course." JARVIS was quiet for a long moment. "Sir has promised to make pancakes. Agent Romanoff is on her way."

"Thank you." Danielle pushed herself up so that she was sitting. She dragged a hand across her mouth and wrinkled her nose at the dried drool there. "Ugh, gross." She stared down at the bandages around her arms. The bandages on her left arm stopped at her wrist, but the bandages on her right arm went almost all the way up to her shoulder. She threw her covers back and stared at her left foot where it was propped up on a pile of pillows and held gently in place by a soft ankle brace.

The door opened. "Well, well, well. Look who finally decided to wake up." Natasha closed the door behind her. "Shower?"

Danielle hesitated. "I, um—"

"You need a shower," Natasha said, staring her down. "And relax. We're both girls here." She waved a hand and turned towards the bathroom. "Let me get it running. Go ahead and drink some water."

Danielle looked to the side to find a water bottle waiting for her on her nightstand. She picked it up and fumbled with the cap for a moment, inhibited by the bandages around her fingers. Finally, she got it off and took a few sips. Not even wanting to try to screw the cap back on, she set both it and the bottle back on the nightstand.

"Ready?"

"Yeah."

Natasha helped Danielle to the edge of the bed. Then she crouched a little and lifted the girl into her arms. She made a show of grunting with effort. "Someone needs to lay off the donuts."

"Hey," Danielle whined.

"Uh-huh. Alright, here you go." She sat her down on the bathroom counter and Danielle shifted to keep from falling. "Hold still," Natasha ordered, reaching around her to untie the strands to the hospital gown. "How are you feeling?"

"You remember that time you took me to New Zealand to keep me away from those threats Dad was getting?"

"Hmm."

"You remember how I caught the flu, strep throat, and meningitis all at once while we were there? It feels like that." Danielle shrugged her shoulders to help Natasha in taking off the hospital gown, though she couldn't find it in herself to be embarrassed about being naked. Natasha helped her in the the shower and sat her down on the stool. "Is everyone . . . staying here?"

Natasha squeezed shampoo into her hands and started lathering up Danielle's oily hair, not seeming to care that she was soaking her clothes by standing in the shower. "Tony renamed it Avengers Tower. We're a team, now, and a team needs a home base, right?" She adjusted the shower head. "Lean your head back."

"Can I take these bandages off?"

"Yes. I'll wrap them again when we're done if you need it."

Danielle fumbled with the end of the bandage around her left hand before finally managing to lift the end of the wrap. The bandages were damp and wanted to stick together, but she managed to wrestle them off. They fell away and revealed the red skin beneath. "Ouch," she mumbled. "Doesn't look too bad." Actually, it looked like a first degree burn. Definitely not too bad at all.

While Natasha started soaping her down, Danielle peeled the bandages from her other arm. The burns were there too, but instead of just wrapping around her hand they had etched themselves all the way up past her bicep. She took a deep breath. "Do they make me look cool?" she asked weakly.

"Very badass," Natasha said, her voice as even as ever. She finished rinsing Danielle off. "I'll get you some clothes and your boot." The redhead turned off the shower and held out a towel. "Dry off but don't try to stand."

Danielle nodded obediently and did so. When Natasha returned, she strapped Danielle's foot into the boot and helped her into her underclothes, shirt, and skirt, since she couldn't pull jeans over the boot. Natasha helped her stand and walk to the counter. "How's that?"

"It hurts a bit, but I'll survive."

Natasha nodded and started combing through her hair before twisting it back in a braid. "Your father should have breakfast ready. Hungry?"

"Always." She hobbled after Natasha towards her bedroom door. She opened it and stepped out. Across the penthouse, she could hear her dad swear, followed by a clanging of what had to be pans. "Doesn't sound like the pancakes are going too well."

Natasha threw her a smile and gripped her elbow, leading her across the floor. They found themselves standing in the entryway to the kitchen, watching as Tony picked up the pots and pans all across the floor and dumped them in the sink while grumbling. Natasha cleared her throat. "I hope you made enough for me," she said.

Tony jerked, dropping the pan in his hands. He looked up. "Um, there should be." His gaze slid to Danielle and he straightened, brushing his hands off on his pants. "You're okay." And then in three swift steps, he was in front of her and dragged her into his arms. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

Danielle shook her head and pressed into his hold. "Sorry for scaring you."

"I've done it to you enough," he mused. "It's about time you got me back for that."

She nodded, twisting her hands in his shirt. But then she pulled back and sniffed. "Is something burning?"

He stared down at her, brow marred with confusion. Then his eyes widened. "The pancakes!" He whipped around and tripped back over to the griddle.

Danielle giggled, though it felt weird with her raw throat. "They wouldn't be _your_ pancakes if they weren't burnt, would they?"

"Hey! I've gotten better."

"Not really," she said, limping to the table. She sat down. "But I think I like them better this way.”

* * *

 

"You're . . . Captain America."

Steve just blinked at her and then nervously rubbed the back of his neck while he threw a look at Tony. "Um, is she gonna stop? That's the fifth time she's said that."

Danielle cleared her throat. "Sorry, it's just." She squinted at him. "I thought you'd be taller. History made you sound taller." She leaned over to Natasha and loudly whispered, "Isn't he supposed to be taller?"

Natasha sighed. "You can stop picking on him, Kroshka. Why don't you meet the others? This is Thor."

"Ah, the Daughter of Iron!" Thor stepped forward, grinning widely. "You fought honorably and I speak for all of my Shield Brothers when I thank you for your bravery during the fight." And then he enveloped her in his arms and lifted her off of her feet.

She squeaked in surprise and kicked uselessly for a moment. "Nope!" she squealed. "Down. Down!"

Thor laughed heartily and set her back on her feet with surprising gentleness. "My apologies. And my apologies for the actions of my brother, as well. There is no excuse for the things he has done to your world, or the things he has done to you. I only hope that, with time, I can properly atone for his sins."

"Your . . . brother." Danielle frowned, rubbing her arm. "Loki, right?"

"Aye. He is responsible for the circumstances surrounding the Tesseract." His expression grew into something more serious and he reached out, putting a heavy hand on her shoulder. "Young one, could you tell me what happened to the Tesseract?"

"Whoa, whoa, big guy!" Someone slung an arm around Danielle's shoulders and hugged her against their side, shoving Thor's hand off. "Let's leave the big questions for the big kids, okay?" The man turned her and she found herself staring up at a grinning man, his face scuffed up badly and covered with Mickey Mouse bandaids. "Name's Clint. Tasha's talked a lot about you. Do you like M&Ms? I've got a five-pound bag in the kitchen pantry that's calling our names."

"She's healing," Natasha said reproachfully. "She shouldn't be ruining her fragile health with junk food."

"Fragile?" Danielle asked, turning a scrutinizing gaze to her. "You think I'm fragile, Nat?"

Natasha just smiled faintly. "I'm sorry? Oh, look, you haven't met Bruce yet. This is Bruce Banner."

Danielle lit up and, pulling away from Clint's side, she reached out a hand towards the scientist. "I love your papers," she breathe. "Amazing research."

Bruce blinked. "Oh, I— Thank you." He shook her hand cautiously. "That's flattering."

"Dad usually gets lost when I start talking about anything that isn't mechanics, but hopefully I can go over some of my ideas about biorhythm's role in the grafting of prosthetics to—"

Mjolnir hit the ground with a booming thump as Thor passed it off to Clint for him to try to hold. And then the windows shattered.

With a shriek, Danielle tumbled to the ground. She clawed at her chest. "I can't— I'm sorry, I— It won't—"

"Whoa, Kroshka." Natasha was the quickest to respond, dropping to her kneels to put herself on the girl's level. "Take a deep breath. It's not your fault. You just need to figure out how to control it."

Thor stepped forward, frowning. "Daughter of Iron, my apologies. I didn't realize—"

Her gaze jerked towards him in surprise and her eyes burned a sharp blue. And then Thor was flying backwards. His hand shot out for Mjolnir and he caught himself before he hit the wall.

Danielle fumbled through her apologies, curling in on herself and burying her burned hands into her hair. She shrank and shuddered and whimpered at the loud hum under her skin. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm—"

"Kroshka," Natasha said desperately. "I need you to listen to me—"

"Danielle," Bruce interrupted, lowering himself to the floor with a grunt. "What street did you grow up on?"

She looked up, face red and tear stained. "Wh-what?"

"What street did you grow up on?"

"Um, Malibu Colony Road." She wiped at her nose and the burning blue in her eyes flickered.

"What was the name of your first teacher?"

"Miss Schwartz. My kindergarten teacher. She thought I was stupid. I just thought she was being too slow with the material." She tucked her shaking hands behind her knees.

"What was the first invention that you ever made? I've heard there were a lot of those."

She stared at him for a long moment before managing a wet chuckle. "I installed a toaster in Dad's car so that every time he honked the horn it spat toast at him."

Bruce's lips twitched and he nodded. "Better?"

Danielle shuddered and looked out at the broken windows, listening to the wind whistling through. "I'm sorry."

"Better?" he asked again.

She swallowed and nodded. "How . . . how did you do that?"

"I have plenty of experience with having to control myself to keep from destroying things."


	3. I am not afraid (for I am learning)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

"I'm sorry for threatening to shoot you."

Clint snorted and then buried his face in the magazine to avoid the look she shot at him. Selvig just blinked, looking up from the MRI results he was studying. "What? Oh, yes, well." He waved a hand. "Can you feel it? Constantly?"

She looked down at her hands and turned them palms up. "Yes. Could I have a look at the results?"

"Everything will be sent to you at the Tower. We'd all appreciate input from a mind like yours. We're going to need it, to figure out what happened." He managed a fluttering smile at her and shuffled towards some of the others that were gathered around a table, studying samples of her blood.

Clint shut the magazine and tossed it aside. "Welp, sounds like that's all they need from you today. You want some ice cream, kid?"

Danielle hopped down from the exam table and gratefully took the hand he offered her for support. "I dunno. I— It's a little dangerous for me to be in public still, isn't it?"

He shrugged, guiding her to the elevator. "Probably. I've never been great at making smart decisions, though. So, ice cream?"

"I really should just go straight back to the Tower. I don't . . . want to be in public if I have trouble again."

"Got it. I'm pretty sure there's some on the main floor back at the Tower." He hit the button for the garage. "What's your favorite?"

"Double dark chocolate chunk. There's usually some around somewhere. We can raid my dad's freezer if we have to." She sniffled and rubbed her scarred shoulder. "Um, thanks for coming with me."

"Meh. Anything to get me out of that stupid press conference the others are at." He slung an arm around her. "You like Tom and Jerry?"

She blinked up at him. "Tom and Jerry?"

Clint dropped his arm and stared at her, horrified. "You mean you've _never_ seen Tom and Jerry? What has your father been doing if not introducing you to mind numbing television?"

"We watch a lot of Spanish soap operas," she said mildly, following him into the parking garage. "That's pretty mind numbing."

"Yeah, I guess, but _still._ You _have_ to see Tom and Jerry." He guided her to the car. "Ice cream and Tom and Jerry are the plans for the afternoon. You're not going anywhere, are you?"

"I'm basically on voluntary house arrest. So no, I'm not going anywhere." She ducked into the passenger seat.

During the entire ride back to the Tower, Clint rambled on and on about all the different cartoons he was going to introduce her to. He drove slower than normal, since he'd discovered that morning it was a bad idea to be reckless while she was with him after he'd run a red light and she'd panicked and shattered the screen on the mini-TV in the dash.

That was how, three hours later, the Avengers returned from their press conference to find Clint passed out on the couch in the common area, fingers stained with ice cream, while Tom and Jerry played aimlessly on the TV and Danielle lounged upside-down on an armchair as she wrote in her songwriting notebook. She twisted a bit to get a look at them as the walked in. "Shh," she urged. "He's been out about half an hour now."

"Sugar coma," Natasha said knowingly. "He does this."

"How was your appointment, baby girl?" Tony asked, crouching down next to her and craning his neck so he could get a look at the music notes she was writing out.

"They're clueless about everything. Selvig said they'll send the results and notes over so I can take a look and give my input. But mostly, they have no idea what's going on."

"Rest easy, Daughter of Iron," Thor said, nodding. "All will be well. You seem to be a brave and strong specimen."

She squinted at him. "Right. Thanks. That's a compliment, right?" Danielle shut her book and swung around so she was sitting up. Her gaze hesitantly searched out Bruce.

Bruce smiled softly. "Are you ready?"

"Um, yeah." She set her book on the end table and climbed to her feet. She followed him to the elevator. "Thank you for helping," she murmured.

"Of course." As the doors closed, he said, "JARIVS, meditation room, please."

"Right away, Doctor Banner."

Just a touch later, the doors opened onto a small hallway and Bruce led her to one of the door. "Have you seen the meditation room yet?"

"No, not yet."

"Ah. Well, Tony had it reinforced that that it could withstand it if I Hulked out in there. So don't worry too much about messing up, okay?" He opened the door and pushed his way inside. "Grab a cushion and let's get started.”

* * *

 

"Is there any possible way?"

"Way for what, sir?"

Tony frowned and crossed his arms, as if it was obvious. "To get the Tesseract out of her. Is there a way?"

Selvig hesitated. "Probably."

"But?"

"She would die."

Tony looked at where Daniella was strapped to the table. She looked at him and tried to beg him not to, straining against the bonds holding her down. He looked away.

"Do it."

Danielle woke up screaming in flashes of blue. She was vaguely aware of JARVIS saying something, but she couldn't focus on that. Instead, was blearily scrambling away from the _red_ in her vision and hit the floor hard. Something above her fizzled and then there was water spraying across her skin and hissing on contact. She pressed down against the floor to try to get away from it and crawled towards the safety under her bed. Heats beat against her back and she curled into the ground, sobs clawing their way up her throat. Something shrill started ringing in her ears.

"Please," she begged. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Just please stop. _Please."_

"Baby, look at me. Danielle, focus on my voice. Breathe and— Thank god. Steve, move the bed!"

Something groaned loudly and the heat at her back disappeared. A hand pressed against her shoulder. "Dani, I need you—"

Panic pressed up into her throat and she scrambled backwards, head slamming into something hard. "No, no, no," she mumbled. Something angry roared in her veins.

"Danielle," a new voice said. "Look at me."

She snapped her head around to find the source of the sound. She could blearily make out a pale face, blond hair, blue eyes. "I'm sorry," she rasped.

"I know. And you're doing a good job right now. A great job. I just need you to try a little harder. Take a deep breath."

She managed a shaky breath and the air burnt against her lungs. "I'm sorry," she said again.

"Let's try standing up. You need to get away from the fire."

She stared at the blurry hand and reached for it. He gripped her hand tightly and pulled her to her feet. She stumbled forward a step before stopping with a cry of pain. She heard someone say something about an ankle, and then she was swept up into someone's arms. She shuddered as the heat under her skin hissed at the contact, boiling against the water drenching her.

"She's burning up," the voice over her said. She felt herself being lowered and she curled gratefully into the couch cushions.

"Fever?"

"Or the cube."

"We need Bruce. Um . . . ."

"I'll get him," the voice said softly. "You stay here with her."

"Thank you." The cushions shifted a bit and a hand smoothed against her forehead. "Can you hear me, baby girl?"

She twitched and tried to respond, but it was so difficult. She only managed a whimper instead.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "Just take a deep breath. Just like that. JARVIS, some Beethoven, please."

As the music began, she let the notes wind familiarly between her muscle and bone and she slowly unfurled on the couch. By the time Steve returned with Bruce, she'd managed to sit up, though she did have to lean heavily into her father's side. She mumbled tired answers to Bruce's questions—yes, she'd eaten all her dinner; no, she didn't remember her dream; no, she wasn't seeing spots; yes, she was going to hit him if he put that thermometer in her ear one more time. Eventually he pulled back.

"There's nothing physically wrong with her. I'm guessing it's just the Tesseract reacting to a bad dream."

"I'm sorry," she managed.

"Oh, it's not your fault, sweetheart," Tony said quickly, pressing kisses against the top of her head. "You're doing amazing. You really are."

"He's right," Steve agreed easily. "A week ago, you were shattering windows on the entire floor. This time, you just set your bed on fire."

She straightened in alarm. "I set the bed on fire?" she squeaked out. "I—"

"Don't apologize again," Steve warned her. "We said you're doing better and it's true. Now, why don't you get more sleep and—"

"No." She shook her head. "I can't go back to sleep.

Steve hesitated and glanced at the clock: five AM. Tony shrugged. "Fine. Go get showered and dressed. You can join Steve later when he coms out of his retirement from acting."

Steve looked about ready to protest, but then Danielle managed a tired smile. "Sounds like fun," she slurred. "Okay, then. Steve?"

He tilted his head to the side. Then he nodded. "I'd love the company.”

* * *

 

"You don't sound quite stuck up enough," she said, upside down in the chair that had _Captain America_ blazoned across the back.

"I'm not supposed to sound stuck up."

"You're the result of an experiment where foreign materials were pumped into your body to bulk you up, but you're standing there and telling kids not to do drugs? Sounding stuck up is the only way you're gonna get through this." She swung herself around so she was sitting up properly. "You've gotta put some oomphf in it." She exaggerated how deep she dropped her voice. "'So, you've got detention—'"

"I am _not_ doing that."

"It would make it better."

"Absolutely not."

"Try to look more disappointed. You really want the kids in detention to _feel_ the shame of Captain America having expected better of them."

He squinted at her for a long moment. "I can't tell if you're being serious or not. You're just as bad as Tony."

The grin she offered up was heavily lopsided. "Well, I do get my personality from him." She clapped him on the shoulder. "So go out there and traumatize some grade-school students!"

He just snorted and jogged off again as the director called his name. Danielle grinned as she watched he take his spot in front of the camera.

"Nachos?"

She blinked and glanced to the side to find what looked like an intern—definitely not old enough to be out of high school—standing there with a tray of food. "Oh, yeah, cool. Thanks." She picked up two bowls and set one in her lap while she cradled the other.

"Of co— Oh my god. You're Danielle Stark."

She blinked at him, mouth full of chips and cheese. "Uh, yeah."

"Oh. My. God. Um, hold on." He shifted the tray so he could hold out a hand. She stared at him and shook his hand with her own cheese-stained on. "You're _amazing._ "

"Oh, uh." She hurriedly swallowed so she could speak. "Do you follow my inventions or something or—"

"You're like the world's hottest teenager. Though what the hell happened to your arms? Have they always been like that? I thought—"

"Go away," she ground out, feeling anxiety bubbling in her chest.

"Wha— Sorry, I just— You've always looked so pretty in your pictures in the magazines and stuff. Did they photoshop your arms so they didn't look like," —he waved a hand— "that."

"Shut up," she growled, feeling heat in her throat. Somewhere overhead, a lightbulb burst loudly and Danielle jerked back at that, forcing herself to breathe. Despite that, though, two more lightbulbs burst, followed by a loud cry from a cameraman as his camera jerked to the side and started sparking blue.

"Is there a problem here?"

Danielle's gaze cut sharply towards Steve as he approached, watching the intern warily, and she measured her breathes. "Somewhat," she forced out between gritted teeth.

Steve watched her for a long moment. Then he nodded. "Alright, we're done for today." He took the two bowls of nachos and put them on the tray the intern was still holding. "Let them know I'll be back tomorrow," he said to the boy. Then he gently gripped Danielle's elbow and helped her down from the chair. He steered her out of the building.

“You should let them know that they'll get reimbursed for the camera," she mumbled. "And the lights. I'm sorry."

"I don't care about the lights," he said easily. "Or the camera. How do you feel?"

"More sensitive. I don't think I got that angry that fast before."

"I know what that's like," he said, hand falling from her elbow as they finally left the building and turned in unison towards where the Tower was. "The serum makes . . . well, it makes everything more intense. It was so easy to get angry faster and it took me a long time to figure out how to control it. I still don't think I have it figured out. If I'm being honest, Bruce has a way better handle on it than I do."

She nodded and shoved her hands in her pockets. "I'm still sorry."

"That's okay. As long as you know that you don't have to be."

She sniffled and rubbed her face "Uh, what were you like? Before the serum? The history books don't talk too much about that part."

He shrugged unhelpfully. "I think I'm pretty much the same, but you know what they say about not being a good judge of your own character. Bucky would be able to give a better comparison. He was the only that really knew me before and after."

"Okay, then. Tell me about him. Maybe that'll give me an idea."

He glanced at her, something anxious and broken in his gaze. He hesitated visibly and she glanced down at the way he clenched his fists.

"Bruce says talking is the best way to work through things. It's how I'm learning to manage."

He chuckled. "Right, then." With that, he launched into a story. "When I was seven, some kids were picking on me. Threw me in a dumpster. Buck jumped in after me 'cause he didn't want me to hang out in there alone."

When they got back to the Tower, Clint was alone in the living room, playing through a Legend of Zelda. He twisted to look at them as they entered and waved. "You two are back early."

"I freaked out and blew up a camera," she said simply. She crouched next to the basket of controllers, selected one, and then slumped onto the couch beside him. "JARVIS, Lusus Override. Smash Brothers."

The screen changed, loading up the other game, and Clint cried out in protest. Danielle just grinned and glanced back. "Grab a controller, Steve. We'll teach ya.”

* * *

 

"Did you just fucking blue shell me?" Steve yelled, surging to his feet. "I was winning!"

Clint grinned up at him. "That's kinda the point."

"Oh, something's got Rogers upset," Natasha said from where she'd suddenly appeared behind them. Danielle jumped, but only a little, while the other two remained un-phased. The redhead smiled. "Mind if I join."

"Grab a controller! Hey, JARVIS, let the others know?"

"Of course," the AI responded. And then a moment later, "Thor is one his way to the common floor. Dr. Banner is finishing a meditation session and then he'll join."

She hesitated. "And Dad?"

"Sir has not left his workshop in thirteen hours."

"Oh." Danielle gnawed on her lip for a moment. Then she turned and shoved the controller into Natasha's arms. "I'm going down to his workshop. Don't wait for me." She shoved herself up and paced into the kitchen. "Last time he ate, J?"

"Thirty-two hours ago, if you don't count the occasional bag of chips."

"Got it." She filled a plate with chicken nuggets and put it in the microwave then got busy making a couple peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She squirted ketchup on the heated plate, grabbed up both dishes, and headed to the elevator. "Dad's workshop, please."

"Of course, Danielle."

She tapped her foot in time to the music she was humming as she waited. The doors slid open and she stepped out, opening the door with her foot. "I brought food, Daddy!"

Tony straightened so quickly that he hit his head. "What?" he rasped, rubbing his head and climbing to his feet. "Oh."

She stopped short, squinting at him. "What were you doing under the table?"

He waved the screwdriver in his hand. "Dropped it. Whatcha got for me?"

"Chicken nuggets and PB and J." She sat the plates next to him. "What are you working on?"

"That's not something you need to—"

"JARVIS?" she interrupted, staring her father down.

"We're currently working on MARK XXXVI."

"Traitor," Tony muttered at the ceiling.

Danielle frowned, pursing her lips. "Dad—"

"I've gotta do this."

"We were supposed to get lunch yesterday," she interrupted yet again, tilting her head to the side. "It's okay that we didn't, but you didn't even talk to me about it."

He stared at her for a long moment. Then his eyes widened. "Oh. I didn't even— I'm sorry, baby, I—"

"You're working too hard."

"I've got to get this done."

She wrinkled her nose, staring him down. Then she nodded. "Right. Okay. I'm going to my workshop." She strode to the door.

"Dani, I—"

"Talk to you later!" she said, waving over her shoulder. JARVIS immediately started the elevator the moment she was inside. It opened on to the floor that had her workshop. "Alright." She clapped her hands and rubbed them together as she stepped inside. The lights came on. "Let's get started. JARVIS, bring up Project NB."

"Of course, Danielle.”

* * *

 

Danielle woke up on the ceiling.

Maybe not quite _on_ the ceiling, but when she opened her eyes it was to her nose bumping against smooth drywall. She stared for a long moment, hot air rasping against her throat. And then she turned her head to the side to try to see what was going on.

Oh, that was _her_ ceiling. And that was _her_ room far below her.

It took several seconds for that to sink in properly. Then she jerked in alarm and shrieked. Blue sparked in her vision and she felt the air yanked out of her as she fell. She slammed into something—soft at first, and then hard—and it gave beneath her. Danielle hit something else after that and she felt pain raging across her back. She turned shakily on her side, gasping for air.

"Danielle," JARVIS's voice cut in. "It is June 8th, 2012. It is three twenty-three in the morning."

She whimpered and curled into herself.

"Would you like me to contact someone?"

"No," she managed hoarsely. "No. Please don't."


	4. Unless someone like you cares (nothing is going to get better)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.

"I could help."

Thor and Steve abruptly stopped their conversation at her interruption and looked up as if they hadn't even realized she was there. Steve blinked. "What?"

"Thor said that the original plan was to secure the Tesseract. That it could power his return to Asgard, right?" She tilted her head to the side. "I mean, I figure I could learn how to control it long enough to power a machine to send you back, right?"

Steve hesitated. "Danielle, I'm not sure that's—"

"Would you be willing to attempt such a bold deed, Daughter of Iron?" Thor asked, his entire being lighting up. "Returning myself and my brother to our home realm would be most beneficial for everyone."

She shrugged. "I could give it a shot. Hell, I can even help out with the machine. You said magic was like science, right? Hopefully you understand enough of your brand of science to help me out with my brand." She shoved up from the couch and moved for the elevator. "We can get started in my workshop."

Thor followed eagerly but Steve shook his head. "Tony isn't going to like this."

"Tough luck," she shouted just before the elevator doors closed.

Thor was practically bouncing with energy at her side. "I cannot thank you enough. And I would love to share my knowledge with you if you believe it would help. Any knowledge you might need."

"Great." She clapped her hands once as they walked into the workshop and the lights came on. Danielle snatched up a notebook and pen and threw herself onto her futon. "Let's start with the basic theory of what you need done, then.”

* * *

 

Danielle was bent over the machine, soldering the last piece into place after eight days of long work struggling to understand a whole new world of galactic physics, when the door to her workshop slammed open and her father started yelling. "What the _hell_ are you thinking! Absolutely not! And how could you go behind my back like this and—"

"Take a deep breath," she interrupted firmly, crossing her arms and turning to face him. "I won't talk to you when you're yelling like a three-year-old."

His glare was biting. "You're not powering that machine."

"Actually, I've already talked to SHIELD and Thor's going home tomorrow."

"It's dangerous."

She squinted at him. "I have an ancient power cube stuck in my body. I'm honestly not sure it gets more dangerous than that. Besides, what do you want to have happen instead? Thor never getting to go home? Loki a constant threat? Because you _know_ that SHIELD isn't good enough to hold him forever."

"I won't let you do this."

"And how do you plan on stopping me?" she asked, tilting her head to the side. "You could lock me in my room, but you can't keep me there forever. You could destroy the machine, but I've already got it all memorized up here." She tapped her forehead. "You can delay this, but you can't stop it."

He stared her down for a long moment and there was something desperate in his gaze. "Dani, please."

"I've gotta do something," she mumbled. "I took the Tesseract away from him. I took Thor's only way home. I wanna fix that. That's what you and I do, right? We're mechanics; we fix things."

He kept staring. He stared to the point that Danielle shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. And then he cleared his throat and straightened. "That's right," he murmured. "Um, tell me about the machine.”

* * *

 

She was staunchly refusing to look at Loki as she set up the machine and explained the basic plan to Thor. When she finished, she glanced over her shoulder at where she knew the SHIELD van was—far away on the opposite side of the large field, just in case she couldn't control the Tesseract well enough. Danielle took a deep breath. "Alright. Ready?"

"Very much so," Thor said solemnly. "Thank you for your help." He adjusted the machine so that Loki was holding one handle.

Danielle glanced up at the second man for a moment before quickly tearing her gaze away before she could focus on him. "Alright. I hope this helps. And . . . you're sure that the extra power will be enough to fix the Bifrost?"

"Yes, young one. At the very least, it will get us to the point in the repairs where we can finish it on our own. Please do not stress." Thor reached out and put a heavy hand on her shoulder. "All will be well."

She managed a smile. "Thanks, Thor," she murmured. Then she cleared her throat and straightened, pressing her palm against the machine. "Here goes."

Danielle closed her eyes and for a brief moment focused on Bruce's instructions from their meditation sessions. She let herself sink into the heat bubbling underneath her skin. She grabbed it firmly and _pulled._ Pain lanced across her bones and she hissed between her teeth but, goddammit, she was a Stark and Starks didn't give up. So she braced herself and forced that burning heat to the forefront.

Something loud snapped over to her left but she resolutely ignored it, focusing purely on the machine. Focusing on it as she poured everything she could into it. Focusing on it as it came to life and began humming beneath her fingers. She kept pushing and pushing and pushing until—

Danielle staggered back with a gasp and her eyes snapped open. Blue was fizzling around her hand like electricity and she shuddered at the shockwaves it was sending up her arm. But then she managed to focus on the blue glow past it just in time to see Thor give her one final grin. Then he twisted the handle on the machine.

Blue exploded outward and she felt something _not quite there_ hit her chest and fling her to the ground. Danielle shook her head to clear the ringing in her ears and the spots in her vision. With a gasp, she struggled to her feet. As she turned, the tall oak off to the east caught her attention and she stared.

It was split clean up the middle and the leaves were all burnt to a crisp.

"Dani?"

She jerked in surprise and looked up to find that Tony was standing in front of her, brow creased in worry. "Oh," she mumbled. "Dad. Hi."

He reached out and looped an arm around her shoulders. "Alright, let's get you home and down for a nap. How does that sound?"

"A nap sounds great," she said blearily, leaning against him for support. "I might just fall asleep right now."

He stooped down and grunted with effort as he lifted her into his arms. "Go ahead. I've got you.”

* * *

 

She awoke to the sound of people arguing over Castle Crashers.

"You're an _archer!"_ Steve was yelling. "How are you missing?"

"It's not the same!" Clint wailed. "I'm trying, but the trajectories here are all fucked up. Besides, you're not exactly doing a great job with your club, big guy."

Danielle yawned and struggled to open her eyes blearily. She pushed herself up, rubbing her eyes.

"Good morning, Goose!"

She froze, immediately recognizing the voice. "Rhodey?" she asked incredulously, looking around through the haze over her eyes. "Where are you?"

She was tapped on the nose. "Right here. Can't see?"

"Um, it's a little blurry," she mumbled. She rubbed her eyes again. She managed to focus in on him and blinked rapidly, his outline becoming more clear. "Hi, Rhodey. What are you doing here?"

"Finally got leave to come back and check up on my favorite goddaughter." He dropped onto the couch next to her, curling an arm around her and pulling her to him.

"I'm your _only_ goddaughter," she said, easily pressing up against him. "I missed you."

He hummed in response for a moment. "Sounds like you've had a lot going on while I've been gone. How are you feeling?"

Danielle just shrugged and burrowed into him. "Nightmares."

"That's . . . not exactly an answer."

"I know," she said, but it was the only answer she could put together.

That night, she went to bed in the Hulk Cage instead of her own room.

* * *

 

"I didn't know you played."

Danielle hit the wrong note and jumped in surprise. The lamp off to her left flickered. She looked up to find Clint standing in the doorway. He managed to look chagrined and offered her a goofy smile. "Didn't mean to surprise you."

She cleared her throat and turned back to the piano. "I play a lot of things, but piano will always be my favorite." She backed up a few lines, gaze flicking across the music, and started the piece again. "Do you play?"

"Naw. I prefer my bow," he said, leaning against the piano and staring down at the keys.

She paused again, glancing up. "You ever tried a harp? Seems like it'd be right up your alley."

His gaze flicked to the harp in the corner of the room. "You play that too?"

She hummed a noncommittal noise and pushed herself to her feet. "It's curved wood and a string. Well, strings. But you're familiar with something like that already."

He gave her a deadpan expression. "Are you comparing my baby to a harp?"

She shrugged and sat down on the stool in front of the instrument. She grazed her fingers across the strings and easily drifted into a string rendition of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. "How's your head?"

He knocked on his temple with his knuckles and grinned. "Still on my shoulders."

She glanced up, still absently playing, and narrowed her eyes at him. "Loki was in your head far longer than he was ever in mine. I didn't even end up hurting anyone and I still have nightmares."

Something shuttered closed in his expression. He cleared his throat. "So teach me about this harp," he said, dragging over her cajon to sit down on. "I bet ten bucks I'll have it mastered in a week."

"Five hundred says you won't."

"Five— I don't have that kind of money," he squawked. "Goddamn rich kids."

"Ten bucks is chump change."

"Fine. Fifty."

"Hundred."

"Seventy-five."

“Deal."

* * *

 

"Happy birthday!" Danielle announced loudly, hefting the large box that it'd taken an embarrassingly long amount of time to wrap towards him. "Mine next!" She shoved her gift to the front, watching as it knocked aside the previous presents.

"Aw, Nerf guns," Clint pouted, watching as the toy weapons he'd given Steve were pushed aside.

"Shush," Danielle silenced him. "Open, Steve."

"Alright, alright," he said, laughing as he tore off the wrapping paper. He ignored the scissors Natasha held out to him and ripped open the box.

"Jesus, Rogers," Tony muttered from his spot on the couch, engrossed in the designs on his StarkPad. "No respect for the packaging."

But Steve was too focused on the contents to listen. "Wow," he managed weakly.

"It's the same type of supplies I use for my art," she said, rocking back and forth in excitement. "You mentioned you used to do a lot of art, but I haven't seen you doing anything. I realized you didn't really have anything. Um . . . . There's pencils, charcoal, watercolors, canvases, pastels—"

"Holy shit, kiddo," Clint interrupted. "You're spoiling him. Captain's gonna get a big head."

"Chill, Barton, you'll get your turn come your birthday."

"I better. No way I'm getting passed over in favor of Rogers." He turned to Steve, who was busy studying the contents of the box. "So? Cake?”

* * *

 

"I wish you guys didn't have to go."

"Well I, for one, am happy to finally get away from you," Clint said as he tossed his duffle bag into the back of the car and turned a tired grin to her.

She wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue out at him. "Suck my dick, Barton!"

"Whoa, hey, language," Steve reproached, though he looked more amused than anything.

She glanced at him and offered up, "Suck my cock?"

"That— No. That's not really any better." He sighed a dragged a hand through his hair. "Besides, Bruce will still be hanging around here."

"Yeah, but Bruce doesn't scream obscenities when he hits a banana in Mario Kart," she pointed out. "Besides, I don't think I could ever convince Bruce to help me put Kool-aid in your shower head."

His gaze narrowed. "That was you?"

She shrugged. "Me and Clint." With that said, she clapped him on the shoulder and offered up a salute to Clint, who was pouting at her. "Have fun on the drive!" She turned on her heel and strode into the elevator. "Workshop, J."

"Of course. What will be working on today?"

"Let's go back to Project NB. I might as well do something useful."


	5. We are imperfect (for better or for worse)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. JSYK, I’m fully away this fic has been kinda staccato and that’s because it’s just more of an introduction to the real story starting (in the next chapter). There’s stuff happening in between, but it’s not super vital in the story and will show up in the side story series for the Erstwhile Universe.

Bruce was halfway through his first cup of coffee of the day, glancing through the Sunday comics, when the entire Tower shook. His coffee sloshed out of his mug, staining the newspaper. He jerked in alarm. "JARVIS! What's going on? Are we under attack?"

It took a beat too long for JARVIS to answer. "My apologies, Dr. Banner. We are not under attack. Do not worry. I've woken Danielle from her nightmare."

Bruce stared down at the brown staining the third frame of _Dilbert._ That was Danielle? "The whole building?"

"The Tesseract within her does seem to be incredibly dangerous, but she is employing some of the techniques you've taught her to control herself. I believe the danger has passed."

"Is, is Tony here?"

"Sir is at a business meeting with SI. Do you need me to contact him?"

"No. It's, um, it's fine. What does, what does Danielle normally do during the day? Maybe if I joined her, that would take the edge off of the stress she's feeling."

"If she follows the pattern she's set for the last two weeks, she will spend an hour in the music room, an hour in her studio, and eighteen in her workshop."

Bruce frowned. "And . . . when does she eat during all of that?"

"That, Dr. Banner, comes with the assumption that she does eat. It varies day to day. I'm afraid too many of Sir's habits were passed on to her."

Bruce sighed and got to his feet, crumbling up the damp newspaper to throw away. "Right. Got it. Let her know I'm making her breakfast."

"Of course, Dr. Banner."

Danielle reached the common floor thirty minutes later. Her hair was wet but tied back in a ponytail and she looked pale, the baggy MIT sweater she was wearing just managing making her look smaller than she really was. She stopped by the kitchen island. "So . . . when you said you were making me dinner, you meant . . . Lucky Charms?"

He winced. "I tried. Pancakes. And then eggs. It didn't work out. Sorry."

"I probably woulda eaten it anyway," she murmured, sitting down and graciously accepting the bowl of cereal. "Dad always burns his pancakes."

He chuckled a bit. "I'll be sure to remember that next time.”

* * *

 

"I should join SHIELD."

On-screen, Natasha's expression didn't change. But next to her Clint looked like he'd just sucked on a lemon and Steve looked practically heartbroken. The last of the three hesitantly began. _"I'm . . . not sure, Danielle."_

"Why?" she asked, crossing her arms. "I'm a good fighter. I like helping people. I—"

 _"It's different,"_ Natasha cut in smoothly. _"This? Fighting? That's all I've ever known. It's what Clint trained for. Hell, after the war, can you imagine Steve at a desk job? But it does things to people, Kroshka."_

Clint nodded, the expression on his face solemn for once. But then it was ruined by a slight upturn in his lips. _"If you join SHIELD, I'll throw a temper tantrum. Full on screaming, banging my fists on the ground, hunger strike—"_

"Okay, I get the idea," she interrupted. "I'll think about it."

Steve didn't look fully happy with that statement, but he nodded. _"No rash decisions."_

"Aye aye, Captain." She saluted.

He rolled his eyes, but Clint cut in before he could say anything else. _"Didja get the birthday present?"_ he asked, grinning. _"Didja, didja, didja?"_

"Yes! Oh my god, just shut up. Yes, I got it." She glanced to the side at where the purple journal was lying on her desk with the words _Hawkeye's Badass Tutorials 101._ The matching bow and bracer, she knew, were stored carefully down in the range. "I already tried it out. I'm totally better than you."

_"Nuh-uh! No way!"_

"Absolutely. You're just that good of an instructor."

Clint faltered for a moment, hesitating as if arguing further would discount his teaching skills. Natasha cut in with a roll of her eyes. _"Did you get the YouTube links I sent you? Thought that we could reintroduce old man Rogers here to the classic art of the swing at the New Year's party when we see you next."_

Danielle lit up. "Sounds like a plan! I hope you've got a nice pair of shoes, Cap, 'cause I'm gonna dance circles around you!”

* * *

 

This time when her shot went wide and she groaned in frustration, the lights only dimmed a little. From his spot on the bench behind her, Bruce softly said, "You're getting better."

"It's still hard," she said, notching the next arrow. "Half the time I forget I need to focus."

"It will get easier."

"Will it, though?" she asked doubtfully.

"Don't ask stupid questions."

"Sorry. I think it's the bow. Clint's personality is rubbing off on me. Oh, god, am I gonna start living in the vents now?" She let off that shot and frowned when it grazed the third ring.

"Living in the— You were crawling in the vents just the other day," Bruce pointed out, lowering his book.

"Yeah, yeah. Because I was convinced that Clint had a secret candy stash up there. And I was _right."_

"A secret— And just how much candy did you eat? Is that why you were so jittery Wednesday?"

She turned slowly on her heel and gave him an innocent smile. "Maybe. I, uh, also found some of the coffee grounds you hadn't hidden in your futile attempts to get Dad to cut down on his caffeine intake."

He closed his book and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Honestly, I don't understand you Starks. Logically, you both know that high levels of coffee is unhealthy, right?"

"Of course," she agreed, moving to hang up her bow. She turned to him as she undid her bracer. "Doesn't change the fact that I'm addicted. Question: what's the best way to send a large gift safely through the mail?”

* * *

 

_"It takes up an entire corner."_

"An entire corner," Danielle said flatly, fitting her notebooks into her suitcase. "Such a tragedy. If you don't want the harp that badly, I can take it back."

 _"No, mine!"_ Clint shouted across the call. _"It's my harp. You can't have it."_

Danielle grinned, moving around the art supplies in the case to make room for her books. "That's what I thought."

He mumbled something about know-it-alls before saying, _"Gonna be stuck on a plane with your old man, huh?"_

"More like he'll be stuck on a plane with me. He's been holing himself up in his workshop, so now I've finally got a chance to show 'im all the stuff I've been working on."

_"He been busy?"_

"You could say that. But I have too. I made this!" She pointed at her necklace, or rather at the electrical pendant on it.

There was a beat of silence. _"Are you . . . pointing? You know this is a phone call, right?"_

"Oh, uh—" She flushed. "Sorry. It's, uh, kinda like a semi-functional EMP, just for the Tesseract instead of electronics."

_"Um, what?"_

"Basically, it's dampening the Tesseract. Not a lot—I found out that trying to completely smother it hurts—but enough for me to control it better. Plus, the Tesseract amps up my senses and dampening it keeps me from getting overwhelmed."

_"Damn, look at how smart you are."_

"Danielle," JARVIS interrupted. "The jet is ready."

"Oh! Right! Okay, talk to you later Clint!" She hurriedly zipped up her suitcase as JARVIS ended the call and then hauled the bag out of the room.

* * *

 

Danielle glared at her father over the top her tablet, watching as he poured himself into his designs. She glanced down at her own work on her StarkPad before sighing and straightening. "I could help, you know. I—"

"No. I've got this."

The rest of her words were lost as she snapped her mouth shut. She just nodded and looked down at her tablet again. With a sigh, she closed it and shoved herself to her feet. She was dimly aware of Tony looking up and she waved a hand, moving to the back of the jet where a bed was. "Imma take a nap."

"Okay," he murmured. "Sleep tight."

She woke up to the sound of the jet landing a few hours later. She stepped out into the cabin to find Tony still making notes in his files. She shoved her hands in her pockets. "So, what's the plan? You and Pepper have dinner, right?"

"Huh?" He looked up and blinked, frowning. "Oh, uh—"

"You forgot, didn't you?" She wrinkled her nose. "Dad—"

"No! I didn't, uh—" He shook his head. "No, it's fine. I'll just get ready and— It's fine."

"What are you working on that's had you so distracted?" she asked, moving forward. "Because really—"

"Nothing." He locked his tablet and looked up at her. "It's fine."

She stared him down. "Nothing," she repeated. "Right. Fine. It's nothing.”

* * *

 

"Pepper?" Danielle asked, rubbing her eyes as if that would make what she was seeing change. "Pepper, why are you sleeping on the couch?"

Pepper whispered something tiredly and opened her eyes. "Oh, Dani," she mumbled. "What time is it?"

"Um, five in the morning. I was about to go on my run. Uh, sorry. For waking you up, I mean." Danielle tugged nervously at her shirt. "I'll just go and you can go back to sleep. I just—" She bit her lip. "Are you . . . are you and Dad fighting?"

Pepper sighed and pushed herself up. "Just a little disagreement, Danielle." She smiled exhaustedly. "Don't worry. It's . . . going to be okay."

"Really?"

"Yes." She reached out and took Danielle's hand in her own. "I love Tony and I love you. We're gonna figure this out. I promise. Do you believe me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I believe you."


	6. Seek freedom (become captive)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from Dune by Frank Herbert. Warning: after this chapter, it spirals dark really, really quickly. Read responsibly and only if you can handle it.

"Is he going to die?"

Tony jerked in alarm in the seat next to her and she winced. She had to admit that, after an hour of sitting there in silence, that was not the best way to break the quiet. He glanced at her. "Of course not," he said hoarsely. He cleared his throat. "Happy's gonna be fine."

Danielle glanced towards the bed and then back down at her sketchbook. She felt Tony move next to her. "What's that?"

"Um . . . I was thinking that it would have been better if they had been able to stop his bleeding sooner, right? Reliably? So I'm just . . . trying to figure it out."

"Ah," he murmured, though his tone was tinged with pride. He fell silent when the door opened to admit a nurse.

Danielle watched at the woman with about checking his vitals, looking over her clipboard. Finally, she turned and glanced at the TV as she reached for the remote. Tony cleared his throat. "Uh, hi."

She jumped, clearly startled, before focusing in on him. "Oh."

Tony rose to his feet and gestured to the TV. "Mind leaving that on?"

Danielle pushed herself up, closing her notebook and tucking her pen behind her ear. The nurse glanced at her and nodded, setting down the remote.

"Sunday night's PBS Downton Abbey. That's his show. He thinks it's elegant."

"It is," Danielle agreed quietly, taking a deep breath at having to miss her plans to watch it with the man.

Tony glanced at her and nodded before looking back at the nurse. "One more thing. Uh, make sure everyone wears their badges. He's a stickler for that sort of thing, and my guys won't let anyone in without them." He turned, setting a hand on Danielle's shoulder and maneuvering her towards the door. She followed him quietly, watching as he exchanged a few quiet words with the security in the hallway.

Once they reached the elevator, she said, "You have that face."

"What face?" he asked, glancing at her.

"The face you always wear when you're going to do something drastic. That one." She frowned at him and bit down on her lip. "What are you gonna do?"

He swallowed thickly and slid his sunglasses on as they stepped out of the elevator into the lobby. "Something drastic." He pulled out his phone and started typing away. "I'm going to ask Pepper to pack up your things."

"I— What?"

"I'm sending you out of California."

"Why?" she asked frantically.

But any answer that he could have given was drowned out by reporters shouting questions the moment they were outside. Danielle ducked her head and pulled at her sweater sleeves, more uncomfortable than she'd ever been around paparazzi at the thought of them snapping pictures of the scars on her arms. She let Tony push her ahead and she moved around the car and slid into the passenger seat just in time to hear the question.

"When is somebody gonna kill this guy?"

She caught her breath.

The reporter sounded less sure as he said, "Just sayin'."

Tony froze and she could see him turn away from the car to face the crowd. "Is that what you want?"

Danielle bit her lip. "No," she murmured. "No, no, no. Stop."

"Here's a little holiday greeting I've been wanting to send to the Mandarin; I just didn't know how to phrase it until now. My name is Tony Stark and I am not afraid of you. I know you're a coward, so I've decided that you just died, pal. I'm gonna come get the body. There's n politics here; it's just good old-fashioned revenge. There's no Pentagon. It's just you and me. And on the off-chance you're a man, here's my home address: 10880, Malibu Port, 90265. I'll leave the door unlocked."

Something clattered against the pillar outside her door and she glanced down to see a broken cellphone laying on the pavement. She glanced to the side as Tony got in. He slammed his door and started the car, slipping his sunglasses back on. She swallowed thickly but didn't say anything as he started driving.

He dug out his phone and put it on the console between them on speaker. She glanced out at the road they were taking, all too aware that it wasn't the road back to the house. After a couple rings, the person on the other end picked up.

_"Tony?"_

"Hey, Steve," Tony said stiffly.

_"No nickname? This must be serious."_

"It is. Are you in DC? For a while?"

 _"Am I— I just got back from a mission this morning. It'll be a few days at least."_ His confusion was clear in his tone, as was his growing concern. _"What's going on?"_

"I'm sending Danielle to DC."

"What?"

_"What?"_

Danielle and Steve asked the question simultaneously and Tony just groaned in frustration. "I need you to keep her safe. Just for a bit. I may have just threatened a terrorist."

_"You what? Tony—"_

"Save the lecture for later. Can you or can you not keep her safe for me?"

There was a beat of silence. _"Of course I can."_

"Great. I have them prepping the jet now and she's leaving within the hour. I'll let Fury know that she'll be landing on their airstrip in about six hours, okay?"

_"I— Yeah. Okay. I'll be there."_

"Great." And then Tony hung up before anything else could be said. "Pepper's getting your things."

"Dad—"

"Dani." He glanced briefly at her as they pulled up to the hangar. "I need you to be safe. Okay?"

She swallowed thickly. "Yeah," she rasped. "Okay. I love you."

"I love you too.”

* * *

 

"Alright, I think I grabbed everything you brought with you, and then I put in some extra sets of clothes and such for when you're in DC," Pepper said, patting down the suitcase. "Also, I brought you some dinner in the mini-fridge andthere's—"

"Pepper."

The woman stopped short, blinking. "Yes?"

"I'll be fine," Danielle said, smiling tensely.

Pepper sighed and her shoulders slumped. "I know. Oh, look you. You're so big now!" She dragged Danielle forward into a hug. "Where's the little tiny girl Tony introduced me to all those years ago?"

"Pepper!" Danielle squeaked, flushing. "Stop," she whined.

"Oh, am I embarrassing you?" Pepper asked knowingly, pushing her out at arm's length. But her smile faded fast. "Be safe," she whispered. "Tony's going to deal with this mess he made and then the three of us will be back together and we'll work everything out, okay?"

Danielle nodded, throat curiously dry. "Yeah," she croaked. "Okay. You be safe too."

"I wouldn't dream of anything else." Pepper pressed a kiss to her forehead before pulling back with a sigh. "Alright. I'm going to go yell at Tony, now."

Danielle watched as she left the jet and the door was closed behind her. The door to the cockpit opened and the pilot glanced out. "Are you ready, Miss Stark?"

Danielle sank into one of the chairs and leaned down to open her suitcase. "I'm ready, George. Go ahead."

He nodded and ducked back into the cockpit, door closing behind him. The plane started to rumble and move and Danielle busied herself with her designs. She went through almost a quarter of her notebook redrawing ideas and scrapping them and improving them before she finally groaned and snapped it shut. She shoved herself to her feet and moved to the mini-fridge. She frowned at the chicken fried rice waiting for her and selected a water bottle instead. She unscrewed the cap as she closed the fridge with her foot and then turned.

Her heart jumped up to strangle her throat and the row of windows off to her left shattered. A cry of alarm ripped itself from between her lips. Danielle threw herself backwards, water dropping to the ground forgotten in front of scrambling away from the stranger standing in front of her.

"Who are you?" she demanded, feeling the plan jerk at the sudden rush of wind into the cabin. The lights turned red and started flashing. Danielle's back hit the wall and she heard a yell from the cockpit and a pounding against the door. "George!" she screamed, gaze flicking towards the cabinet where she knew a gun was. "Who are—"

She hadn't even seen him move. One moment he was several feet away, and then he was looming over her with a hand closing around her throat with no warning but a mild flash of silver. Danielle gasped and scrabbled at the fingers. He lifted and she felt her feet leaving the ground, her body tugging downward in a way where she felt her spine popping. She gasped brokenly for air and clutched at his arm. No, metal. She was clutching at metal.

His other hand lifted and she struggled through the tears burning her eyes to try to see what he was holding. A syringe. She renewed her struggled, seeing spots.

Blue burned in her vision and pain stabbed itself into her head in the form of the sound of crunching metal. The grip on her throat clenched tighter and she tried to scream. Her lungs were burning for air and her shriek was voiceless. Something cold and sharp pressed into her neck. The black was devouring her vision, now. She tried to say something, anything.

She couldn't even feel her body anymore to say it.


	7. My dear (I don't give a damn)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.

She awoke with a hangover and it took her mind a moment to realize exactly why that was impossible. Because despite her constant teasing about the matter, there was no way she would actually sneak a drink behind her father's back.

Her father.

There was something important about him. Something he'd done. He'd sent her away? Was he angry with her? No, that wasn't it. He sent her away because he wanted her safe. And then . . . .

Danielle jerked up with a gasp, heat boiling under her skin and she was too panicked to hold it back. But it just hissed angrily around in her body, burning at her bones, and she crumpled. A scream forced itself up her throat. She clawed at the metal still around her neck, though she couldn't see anything through the white, white, white.

The heat started pulsing through her veins and she pressed into the ground with a whimper. Drums pounded in her head, echoing around angrily in her skull. She struggled against the weight on her eyes before finally forcing them open.

It wasn't white. It was grey, grey, grey.

Her hands scraped across the concrete and her arms shook, threatening to give out as she forced herself to sit up. As she studied the small room—ten by ten, small bed, small stall area with narrow shower and toilet, cinderblock walls—the shaking in her hands became easier to handle.

Breathing didn't.

She reached up at the feeling of phantom metal around her throat only to have her fingers hit something solid before she could touch her neck. Her breath hitched with a mild cry. She curled her fingers around the thick metal encircling her neck; at least, she tried. It was pressed up against her throat, no room between skin and metal, and that explained why it was so hard to breath.

She reached to the back of her neck, tracing the metal until she felt that it was fully together, not a gap available for removal. Danielle tried sliding her fingers between the metal and skin at the nape of her neck, and that was when she felt the stubble. With just a moment of hesitation, she ran her fingers over her head and felt the buzzcut there, her hair shorn away. With a shudder, she dropped her hands back to the collar.

"Okay, Stark," she mumbled. "You got this. What is this? Kidnapping number . . . ." She frowned. "God, this hasn't happened in a long time." She looked down and pulled at the grey clothing she'd been dressed in. "Alright, goal one: find out—"

She broke off as the door clicked loudly and then swung open. "Talking to yourself? I've always heard about geniuses being eccentric."

Danielle eyed the man that stepped inside, studying his sharp eyes and worn face. There was something vaguely familiar about him—she knew she had to have seen him before—but she couldn't place him. She shoved herself up from the ground and rose unsteadily to her feet. "What do you want? Money?"

"Oh, nothing like that," he said absently. He stepped inside, glancing around the small room. Two uniformed guards—dressed in black and holding guns—stepped in after him and the second closed the door. "I want you."

"Wh-what?" she asked, voice breaking. He stepped towards her and she stumbled back into the wall, shaking again. "We can pay you," she rasped. "Just, just name your price. I—"

"Oh, dear." The man sighed. Then he studied her for a long moment. "You have no idea how valuable you are, do you?"

"Send me home," she tried to demand, but her voice still shook. "We'll get you whatever you want. Money, capital—"

"You just don't understand." He reached out for her and she wanted to back away again, but she was already pressed against the wall. His rough fingers gripped her chin and tilted her head up so she had no choice but to meet his icy gaze. "Let me explain to you how the world works. It's an economy, run on exchanges and bargains and agreements. You give something and then get something back. You being here? That's me getting something."

She swallowed and felt his grip tighten at the movement. "And . . . what do I get, then?" she whispered.

He smiled and it was cold and sharp and reminded her of Natasha's angry smile in a way that made Danielle's stomach turn. "You get to live. Doesn't that appeal to you?"

She pressed her lips together and curled her hands into fists to try to stop the way they shook.

"Doesn't it?" he repeated, something in his tone hardening. "Because if it doesn't, I'm sure we can arrange for that to end."

"It does," she forced out. "It does."

He smiled again and pulled his hand back. "Good. We have a job for you, then. Repairing some of the damage you've done to our Asset. You need to fix his arm."

"Your—" Her stomach was full of rocks. "The man you sent after me?" she rasped. "I'm not—" Danielle started shaking her head frantically, pressing back against the wall. "I'm not doing a damn thing for him. Or for you."

He frowned and sighed somewhat sadly. "Such a pity. I was hoping you wouldn't have to be . . . persuaded."

"Per— What?"

He stepped back and motioned and then guards were surging forward. They closed death grips on her arms and started dragging her away from the wall. "No, no, no," she cried out, struggling uselessly against them. "Leave me alone! Please!"

"Oh, darling," the man cooed. "If you didn't want us to hurt you, then you should have agreed. Don't worry, you'll get a second chance. You just have to learn a bit first. Take her."

Danielle screamed and fought against them, but they hauled her through the doorway and down the hall without regard for the way she was dragging her feet on the concrete floor until they bled. She was shoved towards another door and it opened as she was pushed through the doorway. They swung her around and Danielle gasped as she was slammed against the wall and her arms wrenched behind her back. Something clicked and warm metal clenched around her wrists.

"What are you gonna do to me?" she whimpered as they pulled her back from the wall.

The man smiled gently at her. "Don't worry, it's nothing your family isn't already familiar with. After all . . . like father, like daughter." He glanced past her. "Go ahead."

The hands moved to her shoulders and dragged her around. They forced her down to her knees and ice stirred in her chest when she saw what was in front of her. "No, no, no!"

A hand pressed on her head and forced her forward and down. She was in the middle of screaming when her head submerged. Water rushed into her mouth and she gagged, bile backing up in her throat as a defense mechanism. Her chest swelled in an attempt to get air and she closed her eyes against the sting. Her lungs burned and burned and burned and—

The hands dragged her up and she gasped gratefully for the air. But then the hand pressed her downward again and ignored her pleas as the cold surrounded her yet again. She screamed into the water and felt the burn, the burn, the burn, the—

They dragged her up again and this time she was crying, her sobs making it hard for her to catch the air she needed. The hands pressed again. And then dragged up her. Down. And up. And down. And up. And her vision was going black and her stomach was turning and she was begging them to stop.

When they dragged her up again, her stomach heaved and burned against the roof of her mouth as she retched. The contents of her stomach splattered onto the floor and and gasped brokenly.

"That's enough."

The hands released her and she collapsed backwards, whimpering and trying to curl in on herself. But the movement pulled wrong at her shoulders with how her hands were bound behind her. A hand smoothed across her buzzed head. "Danielle, my dear," the man cooed. "I hate to see you like this. I just want the best for you, but I can't manage that if you don't listen to me."

She just sobbed in response.

"Oh, no, don't cry," he murmured, rubbing a thumb under her eyes. "Will you help me now? I don't want to see you crying anymore. Will you help?"

She shied away from the hand. "N-no."

The hand snapped away. "Oh, I just wish you hadn't said that. Try again."

"No, no, no!" She fought against the hold that was dragging her towards the bucket again. "No, no!" She caught her breath and held it just as she was pushed under again. She twisted her hands, trying and straining and getting nowhere. They dragged her up into that precious air, but hardly long enough for her to catch any before her head was underwater again.

The time between was getting shorter and her head was spinning and her heart was threatening to break through her ribs in an attempt to get away. She wailed into the water, searching for relief, when they finally pulled her back and dropped her on the floor again.

"My dear?" he asked again. A steady hand curled around her chin and moved to rub circles on her cheek. "Do you understand what I need from you now?"

Shivering, she managed a nod.

"That's a good girl. Are you going to help me?"

Another sob. Another nod.

"You have no idea how happy I am to hear that." The hand moved and an arm curled around her shoulder, pulling her up and against his chest. Danielle shuddered and pulled away. He let her go. "I'm sorry. I'm just trying to help. I do hate seeing you cry."

She stared at him, wrenching her hands against the cuffs. "If you need my help, fine," she rasped. "What do I have to do?"

He rose to his feet and watched as the guards grabbed her, hauling her up. She couldn't stop the way her legs shook and their hands were all that was keeping her from collapsing. He smiled. "Take her to the Asset and put the files from Project NB in her room."

"Project—" Danielle's words died in her throat and she stared at him. "Who are you?" she whispered. "How do you have my files?"

He smiled sharply again. "My name is Pierce. And believe me when I say that Hydra can get its hands on anything. Including, it seems, you."

And then the fact that they were the ones holding her, moving her, became very important because in that moment it was like she lost her ability to control her body. She sagged into their arms as they pulled her from the room, feet dragging across the concrete yet again.

Hydra, Hydra, Hydra.

That wasn't true. It couldn't be. Steve had told her all about Hydra and the part she remembered most was that it was _gone._

But she also remembered what he told her they said would happen if you cut off one head.

She was jerked roughly to a stop and the metal around her wrists tightened for a moment before clicking and releasing. She drew her hands up to her chest and rubbed her sore wrists, eying the scene in front of her. The hulking, ominous figure was sitting in a chair, except . . . .

"Why's he strapped down?" Danielle asked, eying the metal appendage that was crushed beyond belief. Something twisted in her chest at the thought that she'd been the one to do that. It was nothing but crumpled metal and exposed, sparking wires.

"That's not of your concern," Pierce said gently, putting a hand on her shoulder and guiding her forward. "Take a look at the arm and determine what you need to replace it."

"Replace it?" She jerked her gaze to him. "You said fix."

"And you said you'd help."

She swallowed thickly and let him push her down onto the stool. She stared at the tray of tools next to her and then turned her gaze to study her patient. He stared back with icy eyes in a shadowed face and oh, god, she wished she'd never talked to Steve about the 40s because now she had to be seeing things. So she ducked her head to focus on the arm instead.

They were right; there was no way to fix this. It was going to have to be removed and completely replaced. She reached for a screwdriver and hesitated, glancing up again at his face. And that was wrong, wrong, wrong, because all of Steve's pictures of the man—the impossible, _dead,_ man—had him full of life and smiling and nothing like the blank emptiness dwelling in those eyes.

The Asset, they called him. And she was sharply reminded of the water in her chest and the gentle words the man had cooed to her and knew that she gave in so easily. But him? Steve had woven stories about how stubborn and brave his friend was. He wouldn't give in. They would have had to break him first.

"I need to look inside at what's left," she said softly. "I need to get an idea of how it's all wired. Okay?"

He just stared at her blankly.

Danielle began carefully prying up the panels while eying the mess where metal met skin in a mass of scar tissue. "It's tied in to his nervous system?"

"Yes," Pierce answered. "Both for motion and minor sensory."

She set aside the third panel and hunched over the wiring. It was mess, full of wires whose sheathes had worn away that were twisted around rusted metal. She moved a couple wires and watched as the metal fingers twitched. When she looked up at him, he was completely expressionless but she knew that it had to have hurt. She drew back. "Okay. Do you have blueprints?"

"In your room. You'll work on them and by the morning you'll have a list of materials needed."

"This arm needs to come off for me to start. And . . . ." She frowned and reached for the shoulder. "You need a better anchoring system. The strain this has to be putting on his collarbone and trapezius—"

Her fingers had barely touched the intersection of metal and skin when the man jerked away as best as he could, real panic being the first emotion in his eyes. The guards surged forward and Danielle snatched her hand back, eyes wide. She sniffled. "Sorry," she murmured. "I'm trying to help."

"The arm will be removed for you to look at tomorrow. Take her back to her room."

Before she could stumble to her feet, hands grabbed her and the stool clattered to the ground as she was hauled away from it. She fumbled for footing and tripped between the guards, glancing over her shoulder at the man she was leaving behind at Pierce's mercy. Eyes burning, she turned back and dropped her chin to her chest, giving in to the guards that were leading her away.

* * *

 

She'd long since run out of paper and had started using the floor to write out her designs and equations. She'd decided a while ago to ignore all of the old designs they'd given her—too heavy, to crude, too painful—and had dedicated herself to her prosthetic files. The ones that they'd somehow gotten out from under JARVIS's nose, and that thought made her stomach turn.

Danielle finished calculating how much wire she needed and sat back, scratching at her collar as she studied the blueprints sketched out across the floor. She froze.

Her files. Her notes. They had ahold of her files and her notes and there was a collar around her neck that was keeping the Tesseract suppressed. A collar around her neck that was making it hard to breathe and making her joints ache from the heat trapped inside them.

The room had started to spin at one point, but she wasn't sure when. All she was sure of was that it was a variation of her own technology wrapping around her neck like a death grip. She tried to focus on breathing, counting and counting and counting just like Bruce had taught her.

She stared at the used pencil nubs scattered on the floor below her and tried to remind herself what it was like to be in control of her own thoughts. But as she tried, all she could see was the flash of a god and blue and a burning cold in the middle of her chest. She sagged backwards against her bed's metal frame and felt it digging awkwardly into her spine.

Danielle stared up at the video camera in the upper corner of the room, watching the blinking red light. "I want to go home," she begged. "Please."

Suddenly, all the lights in the room shut off and a voice came flatly through the ceiling, saying, "Lights out."

She couldn't see, she was trapped, trapped in her head, and oh god, she was trying to kill her father. Stop, stop, stop. Danielle screamed against Loki's hold on her and crumpled, curling her arms around her head. "Please," she begged. "Stop, stop, stop!”

* * *

 

"Technically, you're dead." He smacked a newspaper into Tony's chest and moved past him.

Tony glanced down at the headline, ready to give a snarky comeback when the words died on his tongue. _The end of a line?_ it read. _Tony Stark presumed dead; Danielle Stark missing._


	8. All a dream (that ends in nothing)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

When the lights buzzed on, Danielle whimpered and shuffled further back under the bed. With a sniffle, she rubbed at her burning eyes and then curled in on herself again. She heard the door click and then open and she screwed her eyes shut tightly. "Go away," she begged.

There was no answer, but she heard footsteps. Danielle forced herself to look and she watched as the dress shoes stopped a couple feet away. "Well, look at your amazing work, my dear." A hand reached down and picked up some of the scattered papers. "Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful." He chuckled. "Five minutes, then. Then I'll come back for your list of materials. After all, we wouldn't want to have another lesson on obedience, would we?" The shoes left and the door clicked closed.

She heaved a hot, shaky sigh and crawled out from under the bed. Danielle struggled to her feet and glanced at the notepad and new pencil left on the bed. She picked them up with shaking hands and glanced at her notes as she began to write out her list. She was finishing the last bullet point when the door opened.

"Done?"

She caught her breath and hated the way her hands immediately began to shake. "Yes," she mumbled. She turned and thrust the notepad at him. "There's, it, um, there has to be a proper anchoring system before I can attach a full arm. Otherwise, um—" She cut herself off, diving for the ground to gather up her notes for the anchoring system. She dropped those in his hands as well and quickly backed away. "I can build the arm, but I can't attach it until that's done."

"Good." He glanced over his shoulder and passed the pad and papers off to a guard. "Take those to Bowden and have him get started on creating and attaching the anchor." Pierce turned back to her and eyed her for a long moment. Then he smiled something chillingly warm again. "Freshen up. There's a change of clothes in your bathroom. Breakfast will be delivered shortly and then you'll be taken to start on the arm." He stepped out and slammed the door.

Now that he had mentioned it, she was painfully aware of the gnaw in her stomach and the fact that she hadn't been fed the day before. Had it been a full day? It felt like far longer than that. Danielle limped into the stall, joints aching from sleeping on the floor. She fumbled through the cabinet for a new set of clothes and stripped out of the old ones, which were stained with sweat and tears.

Danielle started the shower and ducked inside, shivering when the cold water hit her skin. She squeaked in surprise and struggled with the knob to turn it all the way to the heat. The ice cold water continued to beat against her. She squirted some of the soap into her hair and across her body and scrubbed it in. The entire time she rinsed herself off, she kept shuddering.

She stepped out and rubbed herself down with the rough towel until her skin was red and sore. As she stepped into her new clothing, she heard the door open and froze. When she heard it close, she finished pulling on her shirt and peeked out. The room was empty, but now a tray sat on her bed. Danielle shuffled out and rubbed her nose.

The gruel was cold, the eggs were rubbery, and the bacon was burnt, but she didn't care because her stomach seemed to be trying to eat itself with how hungry she was. Danielle polished the entire meal off and was licking the few last spots out of the bowl when the door opened again. The guard turned his face to her, completely hidden behind his helmet. "I'm to take you to your lab."

"Um, okay," she mumbled. She surged to her feet and scrambled about to gather up her notes. Clutching them to her chest like they were her lifeline, she moved over to him. He stepped outside the door and began leading her down the hallway. The guard outside came up behind her and she glanced back, shuddering at the tight grip he had on his baton.

"Here." The first guard opened a door and motioned her inside.

She had all these images in her mind of what a lab in the base of an evil, secret organization might look like, but they all were dismissed when she stepped in and found herself standing in . . . a very clean, white room that looked almost exactly like a smaller version of her workshop. The door closed and she looked back to find the two guards had stationed themselves silently on either side of the door.

Licking her lips, Danielle headed for the workbench and glanced across the boxes there that were labeled as the materials she needed. Taking a deep breath, she spread out her papers and got ready to follow Pierce's demands.

* * *

 

"Let's go."

Danielle jumped, welding torch flickering off. She looked up and lifted her mask. "What?"

Pierce raised one eyebrow. "You're hardly here because we wanted a new arm for the Asset. The loss of his arm was just a . . . casualty of getting you. No, you're going to become everything he couldn't be. You'll be better." He smiled. "After all, I just want your help."

It wasn't hard to breathe just because of the collar anymore. "No," she rasped out. "I won't."

He sighed. "My dear, we've been over this. You understand the things that happen when you don't do what I ask, don't you?"

"I'm fixing his arm. But beyond that, I won't do a damn thing for you," she snarled. "Because eventually, my dad will get here and he'll kick your ass."

"Oh?" He looked almost sad. "You don't know, do you? Your father can't exactly go anywhere." With a heavy sigh, he reached in his pocket and moved forward. As he reached her, he withdrew a folded piece of paper and held it out to her.

She eyed him and took what looked like a folded newspaper page. She flattened it out on the table. The headline read _Mandarin Attack: Tony Stark Dead._

Danielle looked up sharply. "You're lying," she rasped. "This is fake."

"Hardly. And the Avengers certainly won't be coming for you either. After all, they're too busy dealing with the Mandarin." He smiled. "I'll give you another chance. Come with me; it's time for you to train."

She met his gaze, her hands shaking. "No."

"Very well." He nodded to the guards and they moved forward. Danielle stumbled away, but it was of no use because they easily grabbed her and dragged her away from her workbench. She tried to scream, but a heavy hand clapped down over her face. She gasped uselessly, nose and mouth both covering and obstructing her ability to breathe. They dragged her down the hall and most of her vision was obscured by black spots by the time she heard a door slam behind them.

And then hands were pulling at her shirt and Danielle felt fear and humiliation stirring in her gut as she struggled, and failed, to fight back. Her chest was stripped bare and she folded her arms across her front in an attempt to cover herself. That attempt was stopped when they jerked her hands away and cuffs clicked around her wrists again. Those hands dragged her forward and locked the cuff's chains into a high hook on the wall, stretching her arms above her head in a way they weren't meant to be.

The guards moved away and Danielle strained to look at where they were going, but the ache in her shoulders got worse at that and twisted painfully against her collar and she whimpered in the half second it took her to stop moving. She opened her mouth to demand to know what was going on, but she was interrupted by a loud crack and the feeling of the skin on her back splitting apart. Her words turned into a scream.

Two more cracks and two more feelings of her skin coming apart and white-hot pain burning down her back and dripping into the rest of her body. She wasn't sure when she'd started crying, but the sobs scratched at her throat as the fourth blow came. She tried to lean her head forward against the wall but it twisted her shoulders and her destroyed back and she let out another shriek.

Something loud slammed and Danielle flinched, but no blow came. She held her breath, waiting, waiting, waiting. But there was nothing except the already existing pain and the feeling of her blood dripping down her back and soaking into the waist of her sweatpants.

"H-hello?" she called brokenly. The word echoed in the room but there wasn't an answer.

"P-p-please, someone. L-let me down."

Her shoulders ached from the pull and every time she shifted on her feet, white pain shot through her vision and she lost the ability to breathe.

"Please. Anyone.”

* * *

 

Danielle finished the arm the next day, driven by pure desperation and the sting of the scabbing wounds that stung against her shirt. When Pierce came to check, he simply glanced at the arm and nodded, satisfied. "The anchor is in. You'll put this in first thing tomorrow. For now, you'll retire to your room. Dinner has already been delivered."

"And my dad? Have they found him yet?"

"My dear, your father is dead."

"No," she said stiffly. "He's not. He wouldn't— Dad didn't die. You're lying."

He sighed heavily. "I really don't have time for your delusion right now." He nodded to the guards. "It's time for you to return to your room."

The guards approached her and she stumbled back. "No," she said, shaking her head. "No, I won't—"

Pain arced through her body and someone started screaming—Danielle was vaguely aware that it was her—as her knees gave out and she fell to the ground. She arched her back in an attempt to get away from the pain, but the stinging just continued to crawl from her neck to the rest of her body without fail.

And then it stopped.

Danielle collapsed forward, coughing at the blood trickling down her raw throat. She hacked up a sob. "Wh-what was that?" she whimpered, struggling to look up.

Through her blurry, teary vision, she could see the small remote he was holding, thumb pressed against the dial. "That collar isn't just for show, my dear. Back to your room."

She couldn't move, but it seems that she didn't need to because strong hands grabbed her upper arms and dragged her away. She lost time, because the next thing she knew she was face down on the familiar concrete of her room as the door slammed behind her.

Dead, dead, dead. Her father was dead. Her father was dead and she was alone because he wasn't coming for her. He was dead and the Avengers were left to clean up in the aftermath and there was no way she was priority and she'd just have to wait until she made it to the top of the to do list.

He was dead.

The ache in her chest made her wish that she was too.

* * *

 

Her hands shook and it was hard to focus when most of her energy was going towards avoiding looking up at her patient. Danielle took a deep breath to steady herself before she connected a nerve and wire. She cleared her throat. "Try to move your index finger," she rasped.

She didn't get a verbal response. Danielle watched his finger and it didn't move. Steeling herself, she looked up and met those ice eyes. "Did you try?"

He nodded.

"Alright." She hunched back over his arm and unconnected that wire, moving it. "Try again."

His index finger twitched and Danielle quickly moved on. She was all too aware of the guards close by and the way Pierce was practically breathing down her neck. She connected the last few wires and then slid the arm into lock in the anchor. She fumbled for a moment to pick up the screwdriver, but then she managed to secure the arm and anchor. Danielle pushed herself back, wheeled chair moving at the action.

"Done?"

She glanced to the side at Pierce and her collar pulled at her neck as she turned. "Yeah," she mumbled. "It's done."

Pierce's gaze shifted to the man in the chair. "Asset," he said coldly. "Move your arm. And all five fingers. Test your wrist."

Obediently, he lifted his arm and twisted it side to side while folding and unfolding his fingers in a fist. He turned his wrist. Pierce smiled. "Excellent job. What a good girl." He rested his hand on her shoulder and drew gentle circles with his thumb. "You will do great things, my dear." He nodded to the guards. "Take him back to cryo. Danielle and I have some training to start."

"Wait, what?" Danielle asked, watching as guards moved forward. The man—the impossible, supposed to be _dead,_ man—got to his feet and numbly followed them towards the door. "Cyro? Wh-what do you mean cryo?"

"Well, we can't have him awake and kicking when we don't need him, can we?" Pierce's arm dropped to her bicep and he gripped her tightly. "Let's go."

"What? No." She pulled back. "I won't— I'm not— You won't turn me into whatever it is you're looking for. I will _not—"_

The spurt of burning electricity only lasted a split second, but her scream lasted longer. Danielle sagged in his arms, knees shaking. "Shh," Pierce said softly. "I'm sorry, my dear. It looks like you need a little more persuasion." He slid his arm around her waist and she couldn't do anything but blindly stumble after him as he murmured encouragement to her.

Her vision was beginning to come back to her as he helped her down to the ground. She squinted through the haze up at him. Pierce smiled and then something black slipped over her vision, cloth pressing against her eyes. "Wh-what's that?" she rasped.

"Shh, my dear. It's just time for you to take a little time-out and think about your decision, alright?" Something pressed around her ears and she lost sound immediately. It was replaced by pressure and the feeling in her eardrums from when a plane first took off. Whatever it was locked smoothly under her chin.

Danielle reached up for the coverings but her wrists were caught and pulled behind her. She felt metal curling around her wrists tightly—too tight—but she couldn't hear the familiar click. She pulled her wrists apart and just got the bite of metal into her skin in return.

"Hello?" she called. And oh, god, she couldn't hear herself. "Wh-what are you doing to me?"

The cool air burned against her skin and Danielle shivered, focusing in on the one feeling she had: touch. Then she stilled.

"No, no, no, please!" she begged, deaf to her own words. "Please don't!"

She'd heard about what sensory deprivation could do to people over long periods of time. The complete loss of self and mind and god, she didn't want to lose either of those things. She had to focus. She had to remember why she needed to get through this with herself in tact.

"Dad," she mumbled. Because he was dead but he would want her to get through this. "Bacon." Because how could she leave her cat alone? "Rhodey." Because he was her godfather, and with Tony gone that meant that he was the closest thing to family she had left. "Pepper." Pepper had promised that they would figure it out. She had promised that it would all be okay.

"Dad. Bacon. Rhodey. Pepper. Please, please. I'm sorry. I just wanna go home."


	9. I think it's better to suffer (to fight and to scream out)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

"Dad. Bacon. Rhodey. Pepper. Dad. Bacon. Rhodey. Pepper. Dad. Bacon. Rhodey—"

She broke off with a shriek of surprise, though she couldn't hear it despite the obvious vibrations in her throat. Whatever had touched her lips took that as an opportunity to slip past her teeth and then cool water was draining down her throat. Then the drink pulled away and Danielle arched in a poor attempt to follow it, whining. A hand smoothed across her chin for a moment before that pulled away as well.

"Please don't leave me alone again," she begged. "Please."

There was no answer. Danielle thought that maybe she started crying at that, but she wasn't quite sure. Her blindfold was already soaked with tears and she wasn't sure she had any left.

She forced herself to repeat the names she couldn't hear, and the memory of what they sounded like was slipping from between her fingers.

"D-dad. Bacon." A beat where she struggled. "Rhodey. Pepper."

She was having trouble remembering the last name by the time she felt someone's presence again. Her skin prickled and she shifted, stiff joints protesting. A hand pressed against her arm and she couldn't stop herself from leaning into it, desperate for the contact. Fingers drew circles comfortingly on her bare skin. The pressure around her raw ears lifted and a ringing began in her brain.

"Danielle? My dear? Can you hear me?"

The voice snapped her back to reality and she threw herself away from him. Her shoulders wrenched, wrists snatching her back as she tried to escape. "Get away!" she yelled. And for the first time in god knew how long she could hear her own voice. It was raw and raspy and exhausted but she could _hear_ it.

Pierce sighed loudly and then her blindfold was snatched away. Danielle whimpered and screwed her eyes shut to avoid the light hissing against her retina in the pure white room. "Oh, dear," he murmured. "Are we still on that?"

"I'm not doing a fucking thing for you," she spat out. She tried to open her eyes but recoiled at the light. "Checkmate. So what now? You keep torturing me until I give in?"

"Torture?" he asked. "Oh, no, no, no, darling. This isn't torture. These are just lessons. I'm trying to help you see the truth, but I can't help you see it unless you cooperate."

She managed to squint at his blurry, haloing figure. "Cooperate _this."_ She spat at him.

Pierce drew back and dragged his hand across his face. "Fine, then." He pulled away from her. "Take her back to the water. Take as long as you'd like."

Danielle screwed her eyes shut and bit her lip harshly to keep the pained noises inside as hands began undoing the bindings around her aching wrists. Hands dragged her to her feet and her knees locked, stuck from kneeling in the same position for however long she'd been there. Her feet twitched as she tried to straighten her legs, but she didn't manage to get her footing before they began dragging her. The scabs on the top of her feet tore away against the concrete again and Danielle whined in pain.

One of the guards holding her pushed open a door and she flinched as she saw the familiar bucket. She wrestled weakly against them, but she was physically exhausted from lack of food and emotionally exhausted from the ordeal as a whole. So she fell easily to her knees when they pushed her down. She just shuddered and caught her breath in preparation.

Fingers pinched her nose and Danielle's eyes widened. Her lungs began to sting and she squirmed uselessly. Air forced its way up and she struggled to resist. But then natural bodily function took over and forced her to gasp. Just as she did, a hand on the back of her head shoved her forward into the water. She instinctively inhaled and was rewarded with a mouthful of tepid water. Her lungs swelled and she pushed up against the hands holding her down. They didn't budge. She felt her consciousness slipping and she screamed, water draining down her throat.

They pulled her up and Danielle desperately coughed up water in an attempt to clear her lungs. Before she could finish, they thrust her down into the water again.

They wanted to break her, she knew that much. But more than that, they wanted to use her. And they couldn't use her if they broke her body, only if they broke her mind. And if she could keep herself together. If she could stay strong long enough that they gave up, that they were ashamed to hurt her anymore, then maybe she could survive this.

Dad, Bacon, Rhodey, Pepper.

She lost consciousness under the water.

* * *

 

When she woke up, her arms were pinned above her head and her feet were dangling several inches above the floor. A whimper crawled up her throat as she came to. She tilted her head back, arms pressing harshly against her collar, and was able to get a look at the cuffs holding her wrists bound and where the chain hung from a hook on the wall. She shifted and froze.

Danielle swallowed thickly and looked down at her naked body. She forced herself to keep her breathing steady and she glanced upward at the guards at the door and the chair in the middle of the room. Pierce sat there, a cup of tea in hand as if he didn't even realize she was there. She took a deep breath.

Humiliation. It made sense, of course. Just another way to break her pride. _It's just a body,_ she told herself. _Just a body. Scientifically, just a body._

With that held firmly in the front of her mind, twisting around the names she was keeping there, she stared directly at Pierce. "This isn't my favorite way to wake up, if I'm being honest."

His gaze flicked up to her and he calmly lifted an eyebrow, sipping at his tea.

She was well aware her voice was aching and hoarse but she did her best to inject her usual snark. "Enjoying the view?"

Still no answer.

"So, are you planning on feeding me any time soon? Or giving me something other than just a few tablespoons of water a day?"

Pierce set his empty cup down with a sigh and passed it off to a guard that stepped forward. He crossed one leg over but didn't say anything.

"Is this how you broke Barnes, then? Years and years of treating him like an animal? Or was it something else?"

He paused at that. "You recognized him, then?"

She licked her dry and cracked lips and they started bleeding. "I know Steve Rogers."

"Ah. Of course." He pushed himself to his feet and stepped towards her. "We had a different method with him. A chair that we can put him in." He reached out and dragged his finger across her collarbone. She put everything she had into keeping from flinching. He smiled. "It erased his memories. Made him ours to mold. But I wouldn't dream of doing that to you. No, your mind is simply to precious to risk, sweetheart."

She lifted her chin to try to get away from his touch. "You, you took his memories?" she choked out.

"Why, is that pity I hear?"

Danielle swallowed again. She met his curious gaze coldly. "He deserves better."

A smile twitched his lips. "Is that so?" He drew back. "Fascinating. And you Starks are infamous for your selfishness, yet . . . here we are." He turned sharply on his heel. "Enjoy your alone time, my dear. I'll be back . . . eventually."

The guards followed him out the door. Danielle let her head fall back against the wall harshly and let out a shaky breath. "Dad," she whispered. "Bacon. Rhodey. Pepper. Dad. Bacon. Rhodey. Pepper. Dad. Bacon. Rhodey. Pepper."

She'd lost her voice by the time the door opened again. She could feel the swelling in her hands, and that was the _only_ feeling left in her hands. She'd tried several times to brace her feet against the wall, but they'd long since fallen asleep and all she could feel there was needles.

Pierce motioned the guards forward and the moved to stand by her but didn't take her down. He smiled. "Let me lay some ground rules, my dear. You mention the name Stark, he goes back in the chair. You mention Rogers, he goes back in the chair. You mention his real name, he goes back in the chair. Do you understand the general idea?"

Her mouth was dry and she wasn't sure she believed what he was implying. But she managed a nod.

"Good." He motioned to the guards.

Hands gripped her waist and lifted her upwards. She heard the hiss of metal on metal as her cuffs slid off the hook. They set her on the ground and she stumbled. They let her fall and she hit the concrete harshly, knocking the wind out off her chest. Coughing harshly, she scrabbled against the ground for purchase. Her knees shook and ached as she struggled back up to her feet. The guards grabbed her arms, though she knew for certain that she didn't have the energy to fight back.

Pierce stepped aside as they pushed her through the door. The grips on her arms were tight and she knew that they were going to be simply more bruises to add to the ones already littering her bare body. They suddenly jerked her to a stop and opened the door to her left, shoving her into her room.

She hit the floor again and the door slammed behind her. A whine started in the back of her throat and Danielle curled in on herself. But she didn't cry. She didn't have it left in her.

Dad. Bacon. Rhodey. Pepper.

She forced herself up and limped to the stall, where she practically fell into the shower. Danielle turned on the knob and the water hit her in the face. She stumbled backward with a gasp and she couldn't breathe, they were holding her under, she couldn't move. She couldn't—

Danielle fumbled for the knob and managed to turn it off. With a groan, she sank to the floor and curled her arms around her head.

Dad. Bacon. Rhodey. Pepper.

She struggled up and turned the water on low, just enough of a drip so she could scrub herself down. Then she limped out of the shower, dried off, and pulled on clothes with a feeling of relief. She was stumbling to her cot when she saw a dark figure out of the corner of her eye.

Danielle tripped and hit the ground, gaze locked on the man sitting against the wall. She swallowed thickly, face to face with Bucky Barnes. Her gaze flicked to the camera in the upper corner of the room before going back to the man. "H-hi," she managed.

He didn't answer.

She sat up, folding her numb legs beneath herself. She began trying to rub feeling into her hands. "Do you know who I am?" she asked cautiously.

"You made my arm."

He voice was flat and even and lacked any semblance of emotion. Or even the Brooklyn accent Steve favored. Danielle licked her bloody lips. "Right. My name is Danielle."

He stared at her and she noticed for the first time that his blue eyes lacked the green specks that Steve had. "Danielle," he repeated obediently.

"And what do I call you?"

"Asset."

She frowned. "Yeah, I'm not going to call you that. Anything else? Do you ever get called anything else?"

Flatly, as if reciting rote memorization, he said, "The rumors call me the Winter Soldier."

"Winter Soldier," Danielle said, rolling the name across her tongue. "Alright. I can work with that." She held out a hand. "It's nice to meet you, Winter."

He stared down at her hand as if it had done something to personally offend him. Danielle tilted her head to the side and regarded him sadly for a moment, trying to match him to the pictures Steve had shown her. "Shake my hand," she directed gently.

At that, he lifted his hand and shook hers. She was expecting a strong grip, and that's what she got. But there was something fragile and careful about it. She smiled as he pulled back and returned his hands to his lap. A click at the door broke the moment and then it opened. A guard wordlessly stepped in, two trays in hand. He set them on the bed and left, door slamming behind him.

Danielle glanced at Bucky, but he was just watching her curiously. She struggled to her feet, knees still weak, and moved to lean against the bed. "Are you hungry?"

He watched her for a moment before offering a nod.

Danielle picked up both trays and limped back over to him. She sat in front of him, setting the trays on the floor. "Hmm, do you want the plastic chicken breast, gluey mashed potatoes, and ice cold peas or . . . the plastic chicken breast, gluey mashed potatoes, and ice cold peas? Oh, and look, we've got some water here too." She pushed a tray and one of the water bottles to him.

Danielle struggled through about half of her meal before her stomach began to ache from feeling too full. Wrinkling her nose, she set down her fork and looked up. She blinked. "Winter?"

He looked up at her.

She pointed at his tray. "Are you hungry?"

He nodded once.

"Okay. Eat."

It was as if some sort of hold over him had been broken, because then he snatched up the tray and practically devoured all the food on it. Danielle blinkedand then pushed her tray towards him. With just a second to pause, he ate her unfinished food as well.

"Are you . . . staying in here?" she asked, taking the trays and stacking them against the wall. When he nodded, she considered him for a moment. "There's just the one cot." She got another nod. "You're gonna actually sleep, right?"

"If you need me to."

Danielle wrinkled her nose. "Well, the alternative is you staring at me all night. So yeah, I'd prefer if you slept. Though I'm . . . not really sure what time it is. So who knows when they'll turn out the lights. I'm not even sure if they turn them out at the same time every day." She looked down at her hands. They were still a little swollen and a little too pale and she frowned, returning to rubbing them again. "So why don't we talk and—"

Danielle froze. She took in a carefully measured breath and looked up at him. "Winter," she said, forcing the calmness. "What did they say when they put you in here?"

He looked at her blankly. "I was removed from cryo and informed that staying in here and interacting with you was my new mission."

She grit her teeth. "That son of a bitch," she muttered. Danielle scrambled up to her feet and limped over to the cot. She eyed him for a long moment before steeling herself. She clenched her jaw and closed her eyes.

And she didn't say another word.


	10. It’s the loneliness of it (memories need to be shared)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from The Giver by Lois Lowry.

After eight days of silence—eight days of seeing no one but the brainwashed Bucky Barnes and the masked guard that silently brought their meals—Danielle used up the last of the pencils scattered about the room and found herself on her knees in the stall as she desperately tried to free the knob from the cabinet. She's cracked her nails and scratched open her fingertips in her struggle to unscrew it. "Come on," she muttered, wiping the blood off on her pants in an attempt to dry of her fingers. She gripped the screw and gave it one last desperate twist. The screw groaned and freed itself.

Danielle let out a sigh of relief, gripping the screw in one hand and the knob in the other. She fell back against the wall with a shuddering sob. She was painfully aware of the cold eyes watching her from the main area. She bit down on her lip until she tasted iron and forced herself to her feet. She walked right past the man sitting against the wall to reclaim her spot on her bed. Back to him, she eyed the wall and found a section untouched by pencil lead. She set the knob down by her knee and pinched the screw in her fist.

She set the point of the screw against the wall and closed her eyes, trying to bring up her memory of home. It was difficult and fuzzy and she couldn't quite picture it. Biting her lip again, she opened her eyes and dug the screw into the wall. She spent the new few hours etching her home into the wall, working straight through the time when the guard came and left lunch and again when he came and left dinner.

She scratched out DUM-E and U and Butterfingers and the workshop's messy tables. Her fingers ached and shook by the time she etched her father's figure into the wall. When she reached his face, she hesitated and tried to recall what he looked like. But here brain was fuzzy with exhaustion, physical and emotional, and all she could see was Pierce's sharp, false smile.

"Who is that?"

She stilled at the gravelly voice, pale with disuse. The shorn hair on the back of her neck stood up on end. "My father," she said hoarsely, he first words in over a week that went beyond ordering him to eat or shower. She dropped the screw to her bed and rubbed her sore fingers.

"Where is it?"

"Home." She turned to find him standing by the bed, studying the wall. She shuffled past him and pushed herself to her feet. She frowned at the four untouched trays. "You haven't eaten."

"You haven't eaten."

For a moment, it sounded like he was repeating her. But when she turned to squint at him, he was looking at her pointedly. She gave him a wry smile. "Touché," she murmured, sitting down and reaching for one of the trays. "Eat," she directed. He immediately moved to do so and she watched him over her cold turkey sandwich. Then she scoffed. "So, how long do they plan to keep you in here until I get 'attached?'"

His icy gaze flicked to her. "I was not given the full mission parameters."

She growled a little at that and winced at the tightness the action dragged through her throat. She scratched at her collar. "I know what Pierce is planning. You being here won't change my answer."

Bucky didn't answer.

* * *

 

On the fifteenth day, Danielle was tempted to bite off her own tongue to keep herself from talking when the door opened. She whipped her gaze away from the silent assassin to glare at the guard that was entering. But it wasn't a guard there at all. Pierce smiled. "Danielle. Have you considered my request?"

"Answer hasn't changed," she said firmly.

"Hmm . . . . That's what I thought." He held out a hand to one of the guards and they put a handgun on his palm. Danielle stiffened. He shook his head. "Don't worry, my dear. This isn't for you." Then he aimed and fired.

There was a hoarse cry behind her, immediately cut off with a grunt. Danielle’s eyes widened but she couldn't look behind her. She couldn't move at all. She could only stare, wide-eyed, as Pierce handed the gun back and dusted off his hands. Pierce turned to her. "I hope you understand that the consequences of your continued stubbornness no longer apply to just you. This is where you are now, darling. It's time for you to understand that."

He glanced back and nodded. The guard outside the door shoved in a box with his foot and it came to a stop against Danielle's toes. She looked down at it, absolutely lost to the world. Then the sound of the door slamming jolted her back to reality.

"Oh my god," she mumbled shakily, knees weakening. She lowered herself to the floor, gripping at the plastic box. The red cross on the top swam in her vision and she couldn't figure out for the life of her why it was there. Red cross, red cross. Why was there—

Oh.

Danielle fumbled to open it and then she slid it around. At first glance, Bucky looked exactly the same. But his jaw was tight and his metal hand was clamped down over his left thigh with red leaking between the joints of the machine. He was leaning mildly against the wall, though he straightened when he saw her watching him. She swallowed thickly. "Um, did it . . . did it go all the way through?"

His gaze flicked down to his leg then back to her. "No."

"Shit. Um, okay." She shook out the trembling in her hands. "Uh, pants off. We'll have to get it out and, and bandaged." As he obediently did so, she searched through the box and came up with forceps. She turned back and hissed at the sight of the bullet wound. "Hold still," she muttered. She pulled on a pair of gloves and picked up the forceps. She spread the wound with the tool and held it that way. She took a deep breath and then plunged her fingers inside.

He was absolutely silent but she had to grit her teeth to keep from making a sound. She felt the bullet and struggled to grip it. She pulled it out and let it clatter to the ground. The forceps were close behind. "Um, right, right, right." She fumbled for gauze and pressed it against the injury while she eyed the rest of the box. "Um, sutures or bandage?"

"Sutures will require less attention long term," he said simply.

"Right, right, right."

"Have you done sutures before?"

It was the first question he'd asked and she jerked her head up in surprise to stare at him. "Um . . . . Yeah," she said hoarsely. "My dad is—" She swallowed. "My dad was injury prone." She ducked her head again and stripped off her gloves before retrieving the suture kit. She prepped the needle and held it in one hand while retrieving a wipe with the other. While she cleaned the skin, she mumbled, "I'm sorry. Didn't mean to get you shot."

He didn't answer.

She pulled the needle through and secured the first stitch. She clipped it and prepped the needle again. "I . . . ." Danielle took a deep breath. "I thought I'd be able to keep saying no, you know? Thought that I wouldn't care. But . . . ." She cut off that stitch and started another. "You don't deserve this." She finished off the last stitch. Then she cleaned the area with another wipe before gathering up her bloody supplies. She dumped them in the trash can in the stall and began cleaning her hands.

She glanced to the side to find that Bucky had gotten his pants back on and followed her. Danielle eyed the bullet hole in his clothes. She shook her head to reorient and dried her hands off. "Um, are they gonna take you away?" she mumbled.

He stared at her for a long, long moment. Then he shook his head. "I doubt it. Leverage works best as a constant."

"Comforting," she said softly, glancing down. She studied the red staining his metal hand. "Um, here." She took his hand and moved it under the faucet. She turned the water on and started cleaning the blood off. "Winter, please don't leave me alone."

"I don't make those decisions."

She stared up at him. Then with a sigh, she toweled off his metal hand. "Get some sleep," she mumbled. "You need rest to heal that leg up.”

* * *

 

She stayed up all night, tossing and turning on her hard bed and feeling her etching of her father's workshop through the darkness. She ran her fingers over his blank face before drawing her hand back with a shudder. Danielle rolled over and stared across the room at where she knew Bucky's spot was. "Winter?" she whispered. "Are you awake?"

"Yes."

She licked her dry lips. "Did you sleep?"

"Yes. You woke me a while ago."

"I'm sorry." She sat up and shuffled to the edge of the bed, gripping her blanket tightly. She couldn't see a thing, and so she flinched in surprise when her bare feel touched the cold floor. She stood and stepped carefully forward with a hand out. Her knuckles hit against the wall and she stopped, lowering herself to her knees. "Winter?" she asked quietly. "Can I sit with you?"

"Yes."

She turned her head towards the voice and reached out again until this time her knuckles hit metal. Danielle crawled towards him and leaned against his arm. "Blanket?" she asked, awkwardly struggling with spreading it across them. She smiled a little when she felt him pull on it and adjust it for her. "Thank you." She leaned her head down on his shoulder. "What are they going to do to me?"

He was silent for a long, long time. And then he said, "They're going to turn you into me."

And somehow, after that, she finally managed to fall asleep.

It was the loud slam of the door a while later that make her jerk awake to the sight of Pierce in the doorway. She scrambled up so quickly that her legs gave out, still half asleep, and her knees hit the floor. She rubbed at her cheek where she could feel the imprint of Bucky's metal plating. Danielle leveled a glare at the doorway. "What do you want?" she rasped.

"Have you learned your lesson, my dear? Do you understand the consequences you face?"

She was painfully aware of Bucky getting to his feet behind her. But she couldn't stand from where she was on her knees. "Yes."

"Good. Excellent, in fact. Then let's get started." He stepped aside so that the doorway was clear. "Come with me."

Danielle eyed him for a long moment. She pushed herself up and stepped through the doorway, nervously eying the guards even though they made no move to grab her. She glanced back to find Bucky following her, though his steps were absolutely silent. "Where are we going?"

Pierce turned and started off down the hallway. "It's time for you to start your journey to perfection." He opened a door and motioned her in. "Lie down on the table. We'll begin the procedure immediately."

She stepped inside and then froze, staring at the medical room full of lab-coated individuals. "Wh-what procedure?"

"Perfection has to start somewhere, doesn't it?" He patted the table. "Clothes off. Lie down."

Danielle threw a glance at Bucky and the guard that was standing just a bit too close to him with a gun in hand. She took a deep breath and stripped off her clothes. _Just a body._ She climbed onto the table and laid down. One of the people in a lab coat moved forward and fit a mask over her face. Pierce moved to stare down at her and she tried to focus on him, though her mind was going blurry.

He smiled. "Perfection comes with a little pain, my dear.”

* * *

 

Danielle woke up to the sound of the new collar clicking into place around her neck. With a gasp, she shoved the person aside and tumbled off the table and to the floor. She tried to catch herself, but everything seemed out of place and she awkwardly hit the floor with her elbows instead. She coughed harshly and her arms shook as she pushed herself up. She looked up and glanced around until she located Pierce. "What did you do to me?"

"A mild version of the super soldier serum." He smiled. "The first step in perfection. How do you feel?"

She stared down at herself and never had anything looked so right and so wrong at the same time. She stumbled to her feet. "Um . . . taller," she mumbled.

"Five foot ten," Pierce said easily. "It's a good thing we kept the serum mild. You could hardly blend in anywhere at over six feet tall."

"I was five three."

"Well, now you're not." He motioned to a guard and the man moved forward with a robe.

Danielle took it and quickly wrapped it around her body. She eyed Pierce. "What now?"

"Now? Well, now we work on that brain of yours. And your body." He nodded to a guard. "Take them back to their room."

Danielle eyed the guard cautiously before moving on her own out the door. The pain in her head was hard to ignore as she stumbled clumsily down the hall, her limbs all the wrong length. She pushed her way into her room. Her shoulder clipped the doorframe and she hissed in pain.

After a moment, the door slammed and the tumblers turned loudly as it locked. She turned to face Bucky, but instead she found herself staring at the piles of books on the bed. She snatched up the papers atop the stack. The sticky note stuck to the top read, "Get reading!" The paper itself was directions for a series of hardcore exercises that could be completed in the small room.

She took a deep breath. "You'll help?"

“Yes."

* * *

 

Her brain was different. She found that out quickly. Before, her brain had been nonstop, but controlled; it had been like having too many tab open in a web browser, but they were alphabetically ordered and color coded. Now, though? Post serum? Her head was a hurricane. Tabs had tripled and jumped to windows and other browsers and half of them were blaring inane music while the other half were allowing all cookies and pop-up ads until her head was full of viruses.

She slammed the book on Russian shut with a growl. A snap of her wrist sent the book spinning across the room. It hit the wall and fell open on the floor. Bucky looked up from the anatomy book he'd selected.

"What's wrong?"

"It's too loud," she whined, grabbing her head in her hands until they hurt. "There's too much!" The sob crawled up her throat and between her lips without her consent. She crumpled in on herself and gave herself over completely to her tears, crying into her bed sheets.

A hand curled around her bicep none-too-gently and yanked her up against something solid. Her next cry choked itself off in her throat. She twisted to look up at him and caught the rather confused expression on his face. A tired smile twitched her lips and she buried herself back into his chest. "Thank you," she mumbled, curling her arms around him.

She felt his arms move in an abortive motion before his hands dropped back to his sides. "I want to help," he admitted hesitantly, as if he wasn't sure what to do with the fact that he _wanted_ something.

"You _are_ helping." She folded her legs beneath herself and leaned heavily into him. "You are. But . . . if you want, you can hug me back."

It took a few moments, but his arms came up around her and held her a little too tight. She didn't mind. The pressure took some of her attention away from her mind. "Can you talk to me in Russian?" she whispered. "The book isn't working. It takes too long to get the words off the page."

"Что ты хочешь, чтобы я сказал?" [What do you want me to say?] he asked.

She was quiet for a long, long moment as she sifted through what she knew to translate those words. Then she shook her head and buried further into him. "Anything."

"Что-нибудь." [Anything.]

"Hey! Jerk!" she said, though it was weak. She looked up at him and pouted. "You're being mean."

"Сожалею." [Sorry.] He tapped her head until she tucked herself down against his chest again. "Я поговорю, если ты этого хочешь." [I'll talk if that's what you want.]

"Thank you."


	11. Be true (all the rest is darkness)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from IT by Stephen King.

His name was Sunil Bakshi, he was nicer than Pierce, and she'd never hated anyone more in her entire life. He called her "my sweet girl" and threaded his fingers through her hair and pretended he loved her more than anything.

"You're a goddamn liar," she spat, shying away from the hand on her head. "I'm useful. That's the only reason you're doing this."

"No, no, no. It's not that you're useful. You're _special._ Incredible. Amazing. Gifted. Like Picasso or Beethoven." He took her hands in his, though didn't resist when she pulled away. "Try again. We're letting just a little bit through; just enough for you to learn your gift."

Danielle stared down at her hands, still singed and burned from her previous attempts. Angry and red and painted in welts. She wasn't sure she could try again. She said as much.

"Just one more time," Sunil promised. "Just one more. Then we'll be done for now, my sweet girl. Then we'll be done."

A shuddering breath scratched up her throat and she cupped her hands. "Alright." And though the collar around her neck still ached, she could feel the way they'd loosened its hold over the power bubbling beneath her skin. She twisted the raging energy up towards her hands and pulled it up through her skin. Blue pulsed up her veins. And then the energy left her body at the same time as a whimper did. The blue swirled into an angry, blinding light burning away at her palm and fingers. She reached out and touched the candle wick and the blue there turned yellow as it burned.

The power ripping through her skin dissipated and she winced, pulling back. "There. Done. Are you happy, now?"

"Yes, yes. You've made me ecstatic. You're amazing." He slid his fingers around her wrists and gently pulled her to her feet.

Danielle stumbled up and yanked her hands away. "I want to go back to my room."

He regarded her for a moment and then nodded. "Of course." He turned her with a hand on her back and, despite the fact that she was shying away from his touch, led her out into the hall. She eyed the guards following close, but the echo of the bullet she dug out of Bucky's leg kept her mouth closed. One guard moved forward and opened her door and Sunil smiled. "Sleep well," he murmured.

"Fuck off," she spat.

One of the guards shoved her inside and she stumbled as the door slammed behind her. Bucky dropped from his pushups and rolled into a sitting position so he could turn and eye her. With a sigh, she sank to the floor and settled into the silence between them.

Finally, she said, "Did you have fun without me?"

He frowned, as if her question confused him. "No." He said it simply and she knew better than to try to find the humor in it. He wasn't joking.

"Right. Ooh, dinner." She shuffled towards the two trays on the floor and slid one towards him before focusing on her own. "You don't have to wait for me, you know."

"I know."

"Oh." She squinted at him. "Oh. Thanks."

And there was that confused look again. He nodded once. "You're welcome.”

* * *

 

_Stark's death on the Roxxon oil rig will be commemorated in Central Park this coming Thursday in a ceremony organized by Stark Industries CEO Virginia Potts—_

"Are you reading it again?"

She closed her hands quickly, crumbling the page between her palms. "No," she said a little too loudly, making a show of focusing on the book in front of her, open to a compare and contrast diagram of seven different types of disassembled pistols.

A metal hand entered her vision, palm up and waiting. Danielle kept her head down. "Go away," she mumbled.

"No. Give it here."

With a heavy sigh, she dropped the crumpled paper into his hand. Danielle looked up and watched as he opened it up and smoothed it out against the wall. He ran his gaze across it and then carefully folded it up. "I'll hold on to this," he said, slipping it in his pocket.

"But—" She licked her dry lips. "They'll take it away the next time you have a mission."

"Okay. Then you won't read it anymore."

She was ready to protest, ready to argue for the last scrap of information she had about her father, when the lights turned off. Her need to argue died with that. "Okay," she mumbled. She closed the book and leaned forward, dropping it haphazardly on the floor she couldn't see. "I'mma get some sleep."

He didn't answer, though she knew full well that he had heard her. Danielle felt around for her pillow and clutched it to her chest as she laid down, eyes closed. A moment later, her blanket found itself draped around her shoulders. Danielle opened her eyes and froze. "Winter?" she asked cautiously.

"Go to sleep," he ordered, and a cold hand straightened the blanket over her feet.

Danielle managed a tired smile and, even though the collar kept her from getting comfortable and the bed was always too hard, she fell asleep feeling warm.

* * *

 

Rumlow was her favorite because he didn't pretend to like her the way the others did. With him, there was no double meaning and no lies; he hated her plain and simple, and he made it no secret. And though she hated him too, she could appreciate that he didn't think her dumb enough to believe he cared.

"Again," he ordered, frowning down at her.

Danielle's body hated her for it, but she forced herself back up to her feet. She settled into her stance, vague memories of Natasha's directions echoing in her head. But the comfort of her training sessions with Natasha hardly resembled the bruise blooming across her body, the way her joints shook, or the blood pooling in her mouth. She curled her hands into fists. "Okay," she rasped, voice bubbling.

"Block," he reminded her. Then he surged forward.

She fumbled through blocking and deflecting his blows, only succeeding on a fraction of his hits. Danielle felt her ribs give a bit at a punch to her chest and her eye ached as it made contact with his knuckles. Finally, he jerked her legs out from under her and she hit the ground hard enough to lose all the air in her lungs.

Her vision spun and all she could see was Rumlow leaning over her sneering. "Pitiful. On your feet."

She wanted to resist. She wanted to spit at him and tell him to order someone else around. But she could see Bucky out of the corner of her eye where a guard was standing next to him, gun in hand, and the decision had long since been made for her.

Rumlow repeated the sequence and she struggled through her blocks. Even though her mind knew what was coming, her body just couldn't keep up. Before long, she found herself on the ground again and him standing over her with disappointment coloring his face. He shook his head and turned away, already unwrapping his knuckles. "That's all for today." He turned to address one of the guards. "She runs six miles before you take her back to her room." And then he left as if he hadn't just spent the last three hours beating her to a pulp.

Danielle dragged herself up again and obediently trudged over to the treadmill. She wrinkled her nose at the feeling of her bare feet on the tread. The soles of her feet were sore and worn but growing more and more callused with every day without shoes. One of the guards set the treadmill and she scowled at the speed as she struggled for a moment to settle into the pace of twenty miles an hour.

Of course, at that speed it didn't take her too long to finish her run and stumble off the treadmill, legs shaky from overworking them ever since Sunil dragged her out of her room early that morning. She let herself be prodded down the hallway at gunpoint and shoved into her room. Without protest, she fell onto her bed and buried herself into the scratchy blanket in search of some sense of relief. The door slammed and locked loudly and she winced at how loud the sound was against her ears.

"Danielle."

She groaned and shifted so she could peer at where Bucky stood just a foot away, watching her. With a heavy sigh, she pushed herself up. "I'm gonna shower," she muttered, limping to the stall.

She fumbled with getting a new set of plain grey clothes from the cabinet before stripping down and stepping under the cold water. She scrubbed at her body until her skin was red and the water was draining grey with the sweat and grime from the day. When she moved to wash her face, the water ran pink and she tenderly felt her aching nose, though it had stopped bleeding a bit ago. She could have sworn Rumlow broke it earlier, but now it just was sore to the touch.

When the temperature on the shower went from cool to ice cold, she knew it was time to get out. She only half dried-off before fumbling her way into her clothes. Running a hand across her hair—still short and hardly long enough to even run her fingers through—she yawned and stepped back out into the main room. She was halfway to the bed when the lights clicked off.

"Right." She sighed and felt her way to the bed. "Goodnight, Winter.”

* * *

 

She screamed and blue arched out from her and ripped open the plane. Fire roared around them as it broke through the fuel tank and it was in the midst of all that red that she saw her father. Falling, falling, falling. She tried to scream, but the collar around her throat was too tight and she couldn't breathe enough to even get out a whimper.

"Danielle!" her dad yelled, reaching for her even as he got farther and farther away. "Danielle!"

Except, that wasn't her father's voice and her name wasn't being yelled.

"Danielle," the voice said, biting her name out like a command. It sounded almost like the tone Steve would adopt when he fell back into his military days. "Wake up."

An order. She could work with that. She could obey. She pulled herself back from the nose-diving plane wreckage and into darkness. And when she opened her eyes, the darkness was still there.

"Danielle?"

"I'm . . . I'm awake," she rasped. "I think."

"Good."

There were heavy hands on her shoulders and she didn't want them to leave, so she laid still and murmured, "I'm not getting out of here. Ever. Am I?"

That was the first question she asked him that he didn't answer.


	12. I can’t go back to yesterday (I was a different person then)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
> 
> Someone asked about Danielle's age. She's 16 at this point in the story, having had her birthday a couple of months before capture.

Her stomach was unsettled. It could have been from the fact that she hadn't slept properly in forever. How long had she been here? Weeks? Months? However long it had been, the sleep had just made it worse.

Of course, it could also be that Sunil had promised that the trials that day would be "bigger and better" than any of the ones before.

"You look upset."

She immediately dredged up one of the lessons that Rumlow had been literally beating into her, easily hiding her expression from Bucky. If she tried hard enough, maybe she could hide it from herself too. "Hmm?"

"Talk."

She wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue out at him. "Fine. Whatever." She collected her thoughts. She didn't want to talk about her dad—a breakdown at this time would only make her day of training worse—and she certainly didn't want to talk about leaving Hydra—the consequences that could bring would be too severe. So she settled on something else she missed. "I miss Bacon."

Bucky stared at her for a long moment. Then he picked up the strip of bacon still on his tray and held it out to her, looking confused.

Danielle managed a halfhearted giggle. "No, that's— Thank you, but that's not what I meant. I, uh, I had a cat. His name was Bacon." She smiled weakly. "Keep your breakfast, Winter. You need it."

Four hours later, she was regretting not having him eat her food too as she threw up everything in her stomach and then some. Sunil's hand smoothed comfortingly over her back and she wanted nothing more than to bite it off. But all she could do right then was stay on her knees over the bucket and watch blearily as bile and blood pooled in it. Finally, her stomach stopped heaving and she collapsed back against the wall, too tired to protest as Sunil ran a wet cloth over her face to clean her skin.

"Are you ready to try again, my sweet girl?"

A whine built in the back of her throat, but she forced herself back up to her knees and glared at the steel weight still sitting in the middle of the room. "Yes," she ground out. The humming under her skin was louder than before and she was painfully aware of the remote Sunil was holding that controlled her collar's restraint on her power.

"Go ahead," he urged.

She thrust out her hands and pulled on the power. Almost immediately, she felt it bubbling and boiling in her palms and tearing at her skin. Blue sparked around her hand and then the color began to hum around the weight. She felt something trickling down her upper lip and felt the same feeling on her hands, but she didn't stop.

The weight shifted and shook. The blue around it burned brighter. The weight tilted a bit to the side, one corner lifting one inch. Then two. When it strained for three, Danielle's vision was shaking and tunneling and she was pretty sure that the taste of iron in the back of her throat was a sign of nothing good. But the other corners of the weight lifted and she forced herself to keep going, because if she mastered this then maybe she'd have a chance at fighting back. Someday.

Except she couldn't remember what exactly happened past the final corner of the weight lifting from the ground, because the next thing she knew she was pressed harshly against something cold with black dancing in her line of sight and a yelling match happening somewhere over her. And bizarrely enough, her neck hurt. A twinging, constant, aching pinch just a few centimeters above her collar on the right side. She tried to scratch at it—in her haze, it felt like an itch more than anything else—but she couldn't get her hands to move. In fact, she couldn't get anything to move.

"I'm glad we've come to an understanding," a familiar slick voice said. And the urge to bite off his hand returned. "Take them back to their room. Now."

She felt the dull, distant awareness that she was being lifted. Moved. She tried to say something. Tried to open her eyes to look at who was holding her. But her entire body felt like dead weight and, oh, god, she wasn't dead, was she? She couldn't be dead. She had to get out. She had to get back to her father. She had to—

Oh, right. Her father was dead too.

Danielle didn't have much of an issue giving into that weight.

* * *

 

She woke up to darkness and for a moment forgot that she needed to breathe because, oh right, she wasn't dead. She wasn't that lucky.

With something that managed to make itself half a groan and half a whimper, she rolled over. Only to have something tight clamp around her arm and a voice say, "Careful."

Danielle shrieked and scrambled away. Though her body didn't react quite right, so she ended up more inch-worming to the side and flailing. The voice kept talking, kept ordering her to calm down, and the only response she managed was fidgeting and blinking again and again in hopes of finally being able to _see_ something.

"The lights are out."

Oh, she must have been talking out loud.

"You were. That's a dangerous habit and you need to not do it."

She knew that voice. Danielle managed a dry chuckle that only hurt her throat and she finally relaxed into the hold on her arm. "You sound worried," she mumbled.

"Sit up. You need water."

The hand on her arm shifted to her shoulder for support as she moved. She shuffled around on her bed before she finally found the wall. Danielle leaned against it with a sigh. She smiled fondly as she felt the water bottle he pressed into her hands and listened as he unscrewed the cap. She managed a sip, but it tasted almost acidic against her tongue.

"What happened?"

"You passed out," he said succinctly. "Drink."

Just to pacify him, she took another sip before asking her next question. "And then?"

He didn't answer.

"Winter? What happened after I passed out?"

"I yelled. You got threatened. And we returned to the room."

"You— I— Oh. Okay." And somehow, that answered her question enough to satisfy her curiosity.

"Good, because I'm not explaining anything else. Drink."

She obediently took another sip. "I was talking aloud again, wasn't I?"

"Yes. You need to stop."

"I'll try." In an attempt to head off another order, she sipped at her water again. "My hands feel weird."

"They're healing. And they're wrapped."

"Huh." She lifted her left hand and moved her fingers, feeling the cloth bound around her palm. "Why?"

"Because you needed it."

"Insightful. Thank you."

"Drink."

"Got it."

"You need more sleep. Finish the water and go back to sleep."

She wanted to salute, but knew that he wouldn't be able to see it. So she settled instead for a playful, "Yes, sir!" and a yawn. She drained the bottle and found it taken away. A moment later, a hand was pressing on her shoulder until she shifted to lay down. Then the hand rested on her head and she could feel the cold of the metal fingers through her hair. She pressed into the touch and mumbled goodnight in what she thought might be Russian, but she wasn't sure.

* * *

 

Rumlow pressed a gun into her hands and ordered, "Shoot him."

Danielle stared down at the weapon and briefly considered turning it on him—or herself, she wasn't quite sure—but she knew now that she didn't want to leave Bucky alone. So she lifted her confused gaze to her instructor instead. "What?"

"Kill him."

She didn't want to, but she forced herself to look at the man bound to the chair in the middle of the room, the rope cutting into his bloody arms, his eyes red rimmed and wide, and his screams muffled by the duct tape over his mouth. She swallowed thickly and the gun in her hands was much heavier than it should be. "What did he do?"

"Doesn't matter," Rumlow said firmly. "Shoot him."

"I . . . I can't do that."

He studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded and held out his hand. She frowned as she gave the gun back. It couldn't just be that easy.

Rumlow took the gun and turned it. Danielle's wrapped hands slapped over her ears and she stumbled back at the unexpected gunshot. She didn't scream, but a rush of air did press from between her lips and she stared at the red painting the man's pale face. She was dangerously close to losing her stomach again.

"You didn't have to—"

Really, she should have seen the hit coming. She felt the pain spike in her lip and the world tilted and then her head slammed against the concrete. She heard Rumlow bark what could have been an order for Bucky to stand down, but with the ringing dominating her ears it could have just as easily been him ordering take-out.

Fingers pressed against the back of her neck and she felt a pinch around the collar. The collar jerked back and she felt her trachea close up. She scrambled desperately to her feet, following the dragging weight on her throat. He threw her back and she fell into the wall, gasping for air that no longer quite fit in her throat.

"Straighten up," Rumlow snapped out. He touched the radio on his hip. "Bring the other one in."

Danielle dragged a shaky hand across her nose and stared at the limp figure bound in the chair. Then Rumlow moved, kicking the man aside and she caught her breath as the dead body crashed into the floor. The door opened and two guards dragged in another chair, this time a woman bound to it.

Danielle felt almost distant from herself. It was almost like when she used to work on her projects at home, writing everything she observed down in a notebook. Right then, it was almost like that inside her mind, just passively watching as Rumlow reloaded the gun with one single round and held it out to her again. She watched herself take the gun more than she actually actively felt the action.

"Shoot her," Rumlow ordered.

She could say no. She could refuse again. But then there would be consequences and the woman would die anyway. She told herself that she was just trying to rationalize it; then she told herself that she didn't really have much of a choice.

Danielle lifted the gun and thought of the paper targets Rumlow had her shoot at the range. Just another paper target. She squeezed the trigger and controlled the recoil.

The scientist in her brain made notes: the strength of the kick, the way the woman's head dropped, the way there was less blood than she'd expected. She was dimly aware that she'd passed some sort of test, some sort of terrible rite of passage, but all she could do was note that down and let Rumlow take the gun back. He'd never looked at her like that before, as if he was actually seeing her for the first time and he was _proud,_ but she hated it. She hated it and she wanted that expression to go away.

The scientist in her brain wrote that down.

Rumlow's pride turned to curiosity and then to satisfaction as he studied her, almost the same way she was studying herself. He smiled something coldly pleased. "The mind is the most important weapon and the most dangerous vulnerability in any exchange. If you can play with someone's mind, then that makes you the one in charge. Even if the physical situation is one where you most certainly not."

Her gaze shifted from the body to him. "What do you mean?"

"Torture," he said simply. "Information gathering. If you can turn someone's mind unstable in that situation, it doesn't matter if they're the ones holding pliers to your teeth; you're the one in control." He reached out and gripped her wrist until she could feel the bruises forming. "It's time for you to practice."


	13. Is the soul solid (or is it tender)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from House of Light by Mary Oliver.

After five days—at least, that was her best guess of the timeline—Rumlow returned her to the room with painfully healing bones and fewer fingernails than before. They opened the door and she walked calmly in. But the moment the door closed, she let out a shaky sob and her legs gave out.

"Whoa." Arms came around her, catching her. Danielle brought her hands up and thumped her fists weakly against his chest. "Walk. I'll get you to the bed."

She couldn't quite see, but she knew that voice and she trusted it. So she sank into his arms and stumbled along to his orders. When he helped her onto the bed and wrapped the scratchy blanket firmly around her shoulders, she almost cried in relief. Bucky pressed the back of his flesh hand against her forehead. "Take a deep breath. Can you hear me?"

"Yeah." She forced a long breath.

"Good. Follow my finger," he said, holding a finger up and moving it from side to side. Danielle turned her head to follow it and he frowned. "How do you feel?"

"Please don't make me answer that," she whispered.

"I won't. Have you eaten?"

"Honestly, I'm pretty sure I haven't eaten in a couple days."

He moved away and Danielle let her eyes closed, resting her head back against the wall. A cold hand touched her chin. "Open up. Toast."

Danielle took a tentative bite and her stomach immediately rebelled. She hunched forward, clapping her hand over her mouth. Bucky took her left hand in his and arranged it into a fist, pressed her thumb in the middle. "Squeeze," he urged. "That will get rid of the gag reflex. You need to eat."

Danielle squeezed her thumb until she thought it would break and was able to get the rest of the toast down. Then she obediently sipped at the water he provided her with too. When he set the bottle aside, she gave in to the exhaustion and leaned her head forward against his shoulder. She felt a heavy hand settle on her head.

"Nell, I need you to listen to me," he murmured. "Are you listening?"

"Yes," she whispered, clutching at the blanket.

"Don't give them an inch," he said quietly. "Not even an inch. Do you understand?"

She frowned and moved to pull back so she could look at him. Bucky tightened his grip so she couldn't move.

"Do you understand?" he repeated again, this time a bit harsher.

"Yes," she rasped. "Yes, I do.”

* * *

 

She wasn't sure how long they'd had her, but however long it was it hadn't been long enough for Rumlow to actually think she'd be able to beat him. But he moved in to sweep her foot and she slammed the heel of her hand up into his nose and caught him up in a taitoshi, flipping him over her leg and to the floor. The scientist in her mind made a note of surprise but the soldier in her head propelled her into following him down and trapping him in a triangle choke.

His hands scrabbled against her knees and she squeezes her thighs into the side of his neck, watching as the color in his face changed. Then his fighting turned to a constant tapping against her leg. The soldier didn't let go, but the scientist reminded her of the consequences.

Danielle released him and scrambled to her feet, falling into a defensive position. But Rumlow just rolled up to his knees, hacking until he could breathe again. Fear curled in her gut as she started to wonder if she'd get punished.

Rubbing his throat, Rumlow climbed his feet. He eyed her for a long moment. Then he glanced to the side. "Asset, front and center."

Danielle swallowed hoarsely and watched as Bucky got to his feet and obediently stepped out. Rumlow turned him and then pointed at her. "Five minute match. No surrender. It's time you have a different type of opponent."

"Wh-what?" She bit down on her lip, eying the blank look in Bucky's eyes.

"Five minutes," Rumlow said again, repeating it slowly as if he was speaking with a dumb child. "No surrender." He stepped away and took the stopwatch from one of the guards. He clicked it. "Begin."

Danielle hesitated and turned her attention back to Bucky just in time to avoid the metal fist aimed at her face. The soldier snapped to the forefront. She was distantly aware of pain being noted—twisted wrist from clumsy grab, sore ribs from failure to protect while throwing a punch, wrenched ankle from swept foot—but for the most part she lost herself to the fight.

She found herself on the floor, arm twisted behind her back as she pleaded for him to accept her surrender. Rumlow barked out a command and the pressure on her arm increased and she felt her elbow about to give. She drew up on the small slack in her collar and shoved it to the wrist he was gripping. His hold relaxed in surprise and pain and she scissor-kicked onto her back, where she caught her legs around his head and flipped him. He landed on her leg and she bit back a cry. Tasting iron, Danielle subdued a growl and launched herself at him.

She ducked and blocked and hit and eventually found his metal arm around her throat. Danielle scrabbled up against the hold and reached for the shoulder. Just a little power, just a little power. A shock of blue energy ripped the skin on her finger and she hear a slight click. She was starting to gain black spots in her vision and she snatched at the metal panel, ripping it aside. Danielle struggled and twisted until she got her fingers in the arm and ripped at the wires.

The arm spasmed and jerked away before falling limply to the side and she heard a pained grunt leave his lips. She kicked back and used that to push herself away from him. But the moment she turned, he was close and she felt pain in the side of her head and the world tilted.

And then the world was black.

* * *

 

The world returned to her slowly at first, but then it seemed to grow impatient and her senses burned at the sudden impact of wakefulness. She groaned and lifted her heavy hands to her head, opening her eyes to a dark room.

"Careful," a voice said. "You have a concussion."

"Winter? What-"

"Rule one about waking up: always piece together what you know and what you can learn from observation."

She stilled and threw her mind back. "Rumlow made us fight. I disabled your arm. You . . . knocked me out?"

"Good. What else?"

She dropped her hands back down to her sides and curled her fingers in the scratchy blanket. "This is the blanket they gave me. We're in the room." Danielle shifted. "My ankle is wrapped. I was out long enough to get medical care. The lights are off, so it's night. Minimum . . . four hours?"

"Good. It's been about five."

"Oh. Okay." Danielle frowned. "Wait . . . . I disabled your arm. Oh, god, Winter, I'm sorry, I—"

"It's fine."

"But the sensors— It had to hurt— Still hurt— I built it where— Oh my god—"

"Stop. It's fine. We were told to fight and we did. Remember what I told you?"

She forced a deep breath. "Don't give them an inch."

"Good. I won't apologize for being harsh in the fight; if I go easy on you, then you'll be unprepared for whatever they throw at you later. Or whatever they throw you at. Understand?"

"I— Yes." It was logical. She understood logical. "Thank you."

"They brought in tools."

She reached out and felt around for him. When her knuckles bumped against his arm, she slid her fingers down and clutch at his warm hand. "I'll fix your arm in the morning, then."

"Okay." His hand tightened around hers. "Get some more sleep.”

* * *

 

As soon as she'd fixed his arm, they took Bucky away while spouting something about a mission. She tried to ask how long he'd be gone, but they refused to tell her anything. Instead, Rumlow made her train until her mouth was wet with blood and Sunil had her call upon the Tesseract until she passed out.

When she woke up screaming, she found that she'd been returned to her room.

And she was still alone.


	14. I've given you all (now I'm nothing)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from America by Allen Ginsburg.  
> ATTENTION: CONTENT WARNING for the first scene involving rape/underage sex. Feel free to skip that scene if it would be triggering for you. Brief explanation of what happened will be provided at the end of the chapter if you would prefer that instead.

Rumlow told her to kill a little boy and she said no. When he ordered her again, she pointed out that without Bucky he had no hold over her.

He responded by snapping the little boy's next and ordering the guards to dispose of the body. Then his hands wrenched her arms behind her back and he called her a whore and even the scientist couldn't stop the shudder of horror that uncurled in her chest as she realized exactly what was about to happen. Danielle didn't make a sound—she wouldn't give him that satisfaction—but she poured every available drop of the Tesseract into the hands on her as she twisted desperately away. She heard a grunt of pain, but that victory only lasted a half second before the collar suddenly seemed a thousand times tighter and absolute agony burned in her bones.

This time, Danielle did scream.

A hand clawed at her shirt and she heard the seams rip. _Just a body,_ she told herself. _Just a body._ But it didn't matter how much she repeated it, because this was simply too much even for her cold, clinical side because it wasn't just her body; _his_ body was _right there._ His gripped tightly at her just-long-enough hair and yanked her around. He was growling something about a lesson, a punishment, learning her place; she couldn't quite hear him.

His cock pressed up against her lips and she tried to pull back but the hold on her head got tighter, though the pain was still nothing like the ache her collar was sending shooting through her veins. His other hand came up and pinched her nose and, in a way, it was like being back in the water and unable to breathe. She let her lungs start to burn.

But then her body's natural defenses gave out and she gasped for air. The scientist made a note to work on that.

He pressed into her mouth and she couldn't do anything to stop him, or to stop the tears burning her eyes. She choked around him. Danielle screwed her eyes shut and balled her left hand up into a fist, thumb tucked inside. She squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until she wasn't gagging anymore, though her throat still spasmed a bit around him and she had trouble breathing properly through her nose.

And then he pulled back with a slick pop and shoved her down, face to the floor. She whimpered and kicked as rough hands began to pull at her pants, but a harsh shock of electricity sent her body arching and any thought of fighting back out of her mind. When the electricity didn't stop, it sent everything out of her mind and welcomed black instead.

When she came to, it couldn't have been long because she was whimpering into the concrete as Rumlow shoved into her over and over again. At some point, she'd started blubbering a request for him to stop and was reward with a hand over her mouth and nose. She tried to breathe, but all the air inside her was trapped with nowhere to go, just like she was.

Then Rumlow grunted loudly, rawly, and slammed into her one last time. She shuddered as he coated her insides. Then he pulled back and yanked her roughly around. Her ability to breathe was short lived, however, when he shoved himself back into her mouth.

"Clean me up," he ordered.

Danielle looked up at him and all she could see through her burning eyes was a blur.

"Clean," he ordered again, a hand slapping against her face.

She glared at him.

Then she bit down.

* * *

 

They broke both of Bucky's legs when he returned. Sunil murmured something about it being punishment for her behavior as he held her still and forced her to watch. She wanted to scream, sob, beg them to stop.

_Don't give them an inch._

She instead dredged up everything from her practice torture sessions with Rumlow and remained stone-faced instead. She didn't let any of the pleas or whimpers leave her: not as they took the hammer to his shins, not as they marched her/dragged him down the hall, not when they shoved Bucky—broken bones and all—into the room, and not as Sunil asked her to behave herself in that oily voice of his.

But then the door closed and Danielle dropped to her knees beside him and began spilling out apologies. He didn't say or do anything but offer up a groan and she could smell iron. Danielle tapped his jaw. "Don't bite your tongue." She dragged her hands down and hovered anxiously over his broken shins. "Um, okay, okay, okay. Hold still."

After all, she could move and secure things with the Tesseract, couldn't she? Danielle closed her eyes and focused on the energy instead, willingly using her powers for the first time outside of Sunil's directions. She focused on the bone she could feel tangled in the Tesseract energy and on the pages of the anatomy textbooks that she had memorized. "Hold still," she ordered again.

Then she started stitching his bones back together and he screamed.

* * *

 

They didn't turn the lights off anymore and instead supplied her with hours of work on a helicarrier system for her to improve. She spent six weeks on it before turning the improvements in and finally getting the lights turned off at night again. Of course, with the darkness came increased sleep and with the increased sleep came more nightmares. She wanted to say she lost count of how many times she woke up screaming, but she was a Stark. And more than that, she was a Stark with a serum-enhanced brain; she never lost count of anything.

Which was why she was confused when one day she woke up to intense nausea instead of screaming.

"Nell?" Bucky asked tiredly through the dark room as she stumbled loudly around. She made it to the toilet just before her stomach decided to empty itself. "Nell?" That was definitely panic in Bucky's voice now, without a hint of tiredness. She only barely heard him move and then she felt his hand on her back. "Nell, what is it?"

"Sick," she gasped out, just before hunching over again and retching for a second time. Bucky's hand started pressing circles into her back and she relaxed into it, letting out a mild sob at the uncomfortable feeling writhing inside her. And then she leaned back. And she fell asleep.

When she woke up, she was in a clean white medical room and laid out on a table while the doctors spoke in hushed tones next to her. Danielle struggled up and threw her glance around for Bucky, but he was nowhere to be seen. She frowned and rubbed at her shirt, wrinkling her nose at the oozing feeling on her skin. And that was when she saw that Pierce was sitting next to the door, engrossed in whatever he was reading on his tablet.

"What's going on?" she demanded.

Pierce looked up and there was something predatory about his smile. "Don't worry too much, my dear. You'll have to give us a little time to decide what we want to do with the baby."

"The . . . baby?" Danielle twisted until she could see the doctors again. They were huddled around a screen and she knew exactly what that was: _ultrasound._ Danielle caught her breath and her hand dropped to her sticky stomach again.

"There's benefits to having the baby, of course," Pierce continued. "But there's also plenty of cons. After all, it would give us a soldier with traces of the serum and the Tesseract to mold from birth. However, in the short term, you would be particularly useless and actually more dangerous as certain methods of getting you to comply would be banned in order to protect the child."

"I—" She found that she really didn't know what to say and now she was pretty sure the nausea wasn't just from morning sickness.

Pierce nodded to the guard by the door. "Return her."

The guard moved forward and Danielle scrambled obediently to her feet before he grabbed her. "I've got it," she growled out at him, stalking past him out the door and down the hall towards her room. She stepped inside and listen to the door lock loudly.

Bucky looked up, brow creased. "Where were you?"

She blinked at him and opened her mouth to tell him, but those words weren't what came out. "I don't want them to make my baby a killer."

He stared at her for a long moment and she realized that she wasn't exactly confused by his silence and she knew exactly which gears were turning in his head. Which was why she wasn't surprise when he demanded, "Tell me what happened while I was gone. Who was it?"

And she found that she didn't ever want to hide anything from him.

* * *

 

"Anthony."

Bucky looked up from the armor blueprints he was helping her through. He studied her expression for a long moment and then nodded. "And if it's a girl?"

"Antonia."

"Why?"

"After my father."

"Ah. Okay."

And that was that. Or so she thought. Because Danielle had to admit that she had thought she and Bucky were mentally on the same wavelength permanently, but he surprised her when the lights turned out that night and he said, "Goodnight, Nell. Goodnight, Ant."

It was the first time that crying herself to sleep didn't involve pain or nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW SCENE: If you skipped the first scene due to triggers, here’s a brief overview of what happened so you aren’t lost. Rumlow ordered Danielle to kill a little boy and raped her when she didn’t comply.


	15. Grief can be a burden (you get used to the weight)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from The Truth about Forever by Sarah Dessen.  
> Content Warning: Forced abortion/nonconsensual abortion.

She screamed and cried and fought back and listened as Bucky fought back as well; none of it made a difference. They dragged her to the medical bay and put her under for surgery and she woke up feeling empty and wrecked. They unstrapped her and shoved her down the hall before dumping her in her room and she collapsed in a mess of sobs before Bucky could even catch her. He gathered her up and she felt dwarfed in his arms as he cradled her and murmured apologies in Russian.

Finally, she distantly heard him say something about a shower as he picked her up and carried her to the stall. As he started undressing her, she absently thought that maybe she should stop him before she panicked. But his hands were comforting and familiar and she trusted them. So she blankly followed his orders to stand under the cold water as he washed and scrubbed her down, and then his subsequent orders as he helped her into some new clothing.

Danielle didn't move as he sat her down on the bed. Her hands weren't particularly interesting, but she couldn't bring herself to look at anything else because those were the hands that should have been holding her baby in five months.

"Hey." A metal hand dropped in hers and she habitually curled her fingers around her own handiwork. "Look at me."

Danielle dragged her gaze upward, tapping out a pattern on his wrist. She didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry." He whispered the words carefully, as if he was measuring out their weight. "I'm sorry."

An ugly sob wound up her throat and she slumped forward, tucking her face in his neck. His arms wrapped around her tightly, an anchor keeping her down. Her anchor.

"I'm sorry," he whispered again. "I'll take care of you.”

* * *

 

"Happy birthday, my sweet girl," Sunil cooed.

Danielle narrowed her eyes at him. "You never bring breakfast."

"Well, today is a special day," he assured her. He set down the tray and the two of them watched warily as he stuck a candle in the cupcake and withdrew a lighter. He lit the candle. "Seventeen is a big number."

"Go the fuck away."

"Of course, sweetie." He smiled and backed from the room. The door locked loudly behind him.

Danielle shuffled off the bed and sat in front of the tray, eying it. "I've been here for eight months, then." She shook her head and rolled to her feet. "I'm taking a shower," she muttered. She knew she took too long, but part of her thought that maybe she could drown away the ache in her chest if she stood under the water just a second more, just a second more. But finally she stumbled out and pulled on a tee and shorts before sitting back down in front of the tray.

The candle had gone out. She reached out and tapped her finger against the singed wick and the flame sprang to life. She frowned and drew her hand back, pouring in more energy. The flame burned orange, then yellow, then blue, then white and she felt the heat radiating as it got bigger.

Then her control slipped and the fire exploded outward. Danielle bit back a shriek of surprise and yanked the Tesseract energy back into her body despite her creaking bones. She stared up at Bucky and his wide eyes. Then she dropped her gaze to the charred cupcake before looking down at the red, raw skin on her thighs. "Oh," she mumbled.

And then suddenly Bucky was in front of her, dragging her to her feet and back to the shower. "What were you thinking?" he growled, turning on the water. He braced her against his knee as he moved her so her legs were under the water. "That's gonna scar," he said, gently rubbing his fingers over the burn on her right leg.

"Oh," she said again. And then she absently said, "Okay. Well, I guess I needed something for my birthday, huh? Why not a new scar?"

His movement stuttered. Then he murmured, "I'm sorry that you're stuck here."

"I— It's not your fault. I just . . . . I miss my dad. Even if I leave, I'm never seeing him again. And, and every year he would get me something for my birthday and I miss that. Not, not because of the _things,_ but because it meant he loved me and— I miss him."

He resumed gently washing the water over the burns. "I'm sorry.”

* * *

 

It was her first time seeing the sun since they'd caught her, but she couldn't do a damn thing to appreciate it because all she could focus on was the terrible, awful thing they were telling her to do.

She stared down at the file in front of her. "What . . . what did they do?"

"Nothing." Pierce smiled thinly, like the edge of the knife. It was eerily similar to what she saw in the mirror nowadays. "The father works at a nonprofit for the homeless, the mother is a social workers. The kid is adopted. They have nothing to do with Hydra other than testing you."

Danielle swallowed and glanced over the information again, though she'd already memorized it. They were home that day, all three of them. Family dinner. All in one place, like fish in a barrel. "And . . . if I refuse?"

"I think you already know what would happen. They'll die anyway, after all, and you'll suffer the consequences."

_They'll die anyway. They'll die anyway._

She kept repeating that as they put her in uniform. As they put a mask and goggles over her face reminiscent of what Bucky had worn when he first came for her. She kept repeating that as she took the weapons they gave her and as they loosened the hold her collar had over the Tesseract, though that was accompanied by a warning about stepping out of line.

She kept repeating it to herself as she snuck into the house and caught the father alone and forwent the weapons in exchange for snapping his neck. Pierce praised her in her earpiece and she hated herself just a little bit more. She snuck down the hallway to the kitchen and watched as the mother set the table, smiling and chatting with the little girl sitting there. Danielle closed her eyes.

_They'll die anyway._

She shot the little girl through the head, quick and painless, and the mother screamed and dove forward as her daughter collapsed. Danielle drew back, still hidden and shuddering. The mother was holding her dead child and she could only think about how empty she felt.

Danielle shot the woman through the head too.

* * *

 

She woke up screaming and begging Bucky to just end it as he held her hands and tried to calm her. But no matter how much she asked him to put her out of her misery, he just held her still and kept telling her no as he smoothed back her hair. Eventually, he lulled her back to sleep.

And she woke up alone.

* * *

 

Bucky was gone on a mission for six days and she spent her time without it in complete silence, mechanically obeying every order given to her. When he returned, the dam on her voice broke and she spilled out everything about the mole they'd found in the ranks of Hydra and how they'd brought him to her so that she could learn how to get information that people weren't willing to give. Bucky let her cry on him until she tried to make a half-hearted joke about how it was good that she made his arm waterproof. At that point, he looked at her sadly and just worked away her tears with his metal knuckles.

"I brought you something." He looked a little anxious. "It's not much, and it's late, but I hope it works as a birthday present. Like you were talking about."

Danielle drew back. "You . . . brought me a gift?"

He nodded. "I swiped it off of one of the people they had me kill." He dug in his pocket and held it out.

She carefully took the hair clip. It had clearly been expensive and she wondered for a moment which of the rich people she knew about he could have killed. Pepper's face flashed through her mind and she decided that she really didn't want to know. Danielle skipped her fingers over the line of pearls. "Thank you." She held it back out to him and watched the confusion flitter over his face. "Put it in for me?"

He took the clip and shuffled around to sit behind her. He ran his fingers through her hair and clipped it back. Then he unclipped it and tried again. "I'm . . . not very good at that."

"It's alright," she said, feeling the clip and then the uneven bumps in her hair. Then she moved to press up against his side. "Thanks, Winter."


	16. I worked hard to please you (I hoped you'd love me)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

The first time Danielle won a match again Bucky and had him pinned down, she felt her heart soar at the pride she saw in his eyes. But then Sunil called her his sweet girl and told her he knew she could do it and she just wanted to undo the entire fight. When Sunil leaned it to press a slimy kiss against her forehead, she threw a panicked gaze at where Bucky was across the room and wanted nothing more to be near him instead.

And then the Tesseract flickered along her skin and she felt a slight ache that was growing familiar and she stumbled forward into a wall that hadn't been there before. Danielle caught herself and her brain began to race as she tried to figure out what had just happened. She could hear a sudden surge of confusion and chatter behind her. She turned to find Bucky standing right next to her, wide eyed. When had he moved?

But then she looked around and found Sunil still in the same spot. And he was grinning like a madman. "Incredible! Immediate teleportation wasn't even something we'd considered. Fascinating!" He waved the the guards and scientists in the room aside and slipped out a pen. He bent down and marked an X on the floor. "Do it again. Move here."

"I—" Danielle blinked and stared at the X. If she could teleport, if she could improve it, that was good for her, right? It meant it would be easier to leave, easier to get out. She could escape. She just had to learn.

She drew up on the Tesseract and focused on the X and . . . nothing.

Sunil frowned. "What's different? How did it work before?"

She hesitated. "I . . . ." She swallowed thickly and prayed that her words wouldn't bring a punishment on her. "I wanted to get away from you. I wanted to be by Winter."

He frowned and nodded. Sunil moved across the room and pointed at Bucky. "Go over there." Then he took Bucky's place beside her. Sunil put a hand on her arm, rubbing circles. "Alright, focus." She wanted to smack his hand away. His thumb rubbed up and down against her skin and he dropped his voice. "I know you can do this. I know—"

And then Danielle was stumbling forward again in a different spot than where she had been before, though this time Bucky caught her. Sunil let out a cry of delight and he hurriedly started speaking about contacting Director Pierce immediately. At that, Bucky's hold on her got tighter. The last thing she wanted was for him to let go.

* * *

 

Sunil and Rumlow took two different approaches to training her teleportation. Sunil would plead and sooth and wheedle his way to success, and most of the time it only worked out of her pure annoyance. Rumlow's approach was much more direct.

He leveled a gun at her. "You have five seconds."

She did it in three.

Rumlow's method was far more effective, though she hated it more and had the bullet scars to prove it. She would flicker and flicker and flicker, squeezing herself through that odd dimensional space that was becoming more and more familiar until finally she would pass out and her trainer would drag her back to her room, where Bucky would be waiting.

Bucky was there with her the day that they decided to incorporate her flickers into combat. She beat sixteen different opponents and it was taking everything in her not to beg for a break when Rumlow stripped off his jacket and stepped forward. Danielle steeled herself; she'd beaten him before and she could do it again.

Only, this time it took less than a minute before she had him pinned to the ground, foot on his head and arm wrenched dangerously behind him. Sunil called the match and announced they were done for the day. Danielle let her shoulders slump in relief and she released Rumlow, stepping over him with her focus set on the door. The only warning she got was the way Bucky stiffened out of the corner of her eye.

She heard the gunshot at the same moment that pain exploded in her abdomen. She saw the crack develop in the door ahead of her and then slowly looked down at the red soaking her shirt. Before she could have any sort of reaction, she heard yelling. Danielle absently pressed her hand against her stomach and looked back to find Bucky trying to throw off the dozen guards that were holding him back from Rumlow.

Sunil stepped forward with a small device in his hand. He reached out and pressed it against Bucky's neck and her heart jolted at the sound of buzzing electricity. Bucky crumpled.

Danielle was vaguely aware of herself trying to say no as the world began to fade away. And she was vaguely aware of Sunil leaning over her.

"We've gone as far with the two of them together as we can. Time to move on.”

* * *

 

When she woke up, she didn't open her eyes because she was missing one very important thing: Danielle couldn't hear Bucky breathing. The blanket over her was heavy and thick, but not scratchy. There wasn't the hum of the lights, though she could see some through her eyelids. She wasn't in her room. Danielle took a long sniff. It didn't smell familiar either. Danielle shifted. She wasn't tied down, she wasn't injured. Her abdomen was a little sore, but it had to have been around two days for the pain to be down to that.

She opened her eyes and that was definitely not her ceiling. It was lacking the normal clinical white, instead a sickly grey. There were two other beds in the room, neatly made with clean and un-rumpled sheets. Stiff. Brand new. They hadn't been slept in, so she was the room's first occupant. She sat up and scratched at her collar, eying the rest of the room. The stall here had a door, at least. And there was a window. A small, tiny thing up near the ceiling that would be hardly big enough for a cat to squeeze through.

Danielle studied the main door and climbed to her feet. She pressed her hand against it and felt out with the Tesseract. It was thick and she felt tumblers. Her heart skipped and she yanked her energy back when the tumblers suddenly moved. She flickered to the other side of the room.

The door swung open and she glanced across the man standing there. Not Pierce, not Rumlow, not Sunil.

"You know, monocles aren't really in style anymore."

He just smiled. "Take a walk with me." Then he turned and strode off.

Danielle hesitated. She flickered out into the hallway and stumbled into step beside him. As she followed him, she started building a map in the back of her head.

"My name Is Wolfgang von Strucker."

"You've got a whole 80s movie villain vibe goin' on."

"Ah, yes, your humor. I have heard tales." He glanced at her and adjusted his monocle. "I am not as kind as your previous employers." That term made her scoff. "Here, I get results." He stopped. "Behold, my results."

There were two glass boxes, each exhibiting a human being like a zoo animal. In one, a young woman was waving her hands in the air as loose, airy red twisted around the objects floating in front of her—a water cup, a pen, a piece of paper. Her eyes were glassy and absent. The box next to her contained a man. He was pressed up against the wall, his entire body vibrating and his head shaking so quickly that all she could see was an abstract blur. Then his body flashed and he thudded against another wall and started all over again.

"What did you do to them?"

"In a way, I tried to recreate you." He smiled. "And yet, I'm not sure their potential could match what you've done on the surface. They were built by a stone; you are one."

"I feel like I should make a pot joke."

He turned to her, brow furrowing.

She raised an eyebrow. "Marijuana? Stoned? Really, what are you, ninety?" Danielle shoved her hands in her pockets and only half listened to him firmly state that her humor would have to be curbed. Instead, she spent most of her attention studying the two people in the cages. "Where'd you get them?"

"They volunteered."

"Hmm." Danielle drew back and turned to look around. "Where's Winter?"

"You don't have to worry about him. He's certainly not worrying about you."

She stilled and hot angry boiled up in her lungs. "You wiped him again?"

"Well, not me personally. But yes, the Asset has been reset."

"He has a _name,"_ she hissed. "His name is James Buchanan Barnes and he's not an asset, he's a human being and—"

He lifted his hand and thumbed the remote he was holding. "He has no name, he has a title. Just as you have no name."

"I have a name," she growled. "Danielle Maria Stark. You can't take that away from me."

"You have no name," he repeated. "You have a title, Four Blue, and that is all."

"Winter's not here. You can't make me do anything."

"You have no idea what I can make you do." He clicked the remote and Danielle's hands snapped to her collar as electricity buzzed through her skin. She bit through her tongue to choke back a scream. Strucker let up on the button. "Good, good. Let's begin. We'll start with the distance of your spatial jumps. Once your progress is satisfactory, we will move on to precision."

"I'm not doing shit for you," she rasped out angrily.

He clicked the remote again.


	17. Let yourself be gutted (start there)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed.

Danielle woke to the sound of the tumblers moving. She stayed completely still, eyes closed, and just listened as the door opened and feet shuffled. She heard whispers: heavily accented, though different from Strucker's, with one male and one female. There was a creak of a bed. New roommates, then.

Logical conclusion: the Maximoff twins had passed stability tests three days earlier than estimated.

The door closed and she waited for the sounds in the room to settle. Then she waited a bit more. Danielle opened her eyes and let the small sliver of moonlight through the window give her at least some ability to see. There was a larger figure occupying the bed directly across from her; that had to be the brother. The bed on off to the right of the first had a smaller figure.

Danielle didn't close her eyes again. She wouldn't sleep. Not around strangers that could be a threat like them.

* * *

 

Strucker dragged her from the room before dawn, before the twins awoke, and spent the next few hours making her set and control fires until her skin split. As a reward, she got a small breakfast—far smaller than what Sunil had ensured she was provided with—before being thrown into spars against three or more opponents at a time. She broke six bones by noon and had to struggle through her bland lunch with two fractured wrists. After that, Strucker made her heal her own bones and she passed out from exhaustion, just like she had when healing Bucky. Strucker made a comment about the additional stress that put on her body, out loud noting that it could have long term consequences.

And then he broke both her knees and made her heal herself again.

By dinner, she'd killed one Hydra traitor and interrogated—violently—a second. Then Strucker locked the collar's control over the Tesseract and made her lift thousand pound weight after thousand pound weight with her bare hands until her left ulna finally cracked.

At that point, Strucker seemed to have finally tired of her presence and he sent her away, alone, to return to her room. Danielle clutched her broken arm to her chest and shambled down the hall. The guard opened the door at her approach and she stepped into the room, the soldier in her head immediately noting exactly where the twins were in the room and how many potential weapons were within their reach.

The boy shot to his feet the moment the door closed and in a grey blur was standing next to her. "I'm Pietro," he offered up, smiling cheekily. And there was anger in his eyes, not directed at her but there nonetheless. "That's my sister, Wanda."

Danielle didn't say anything, glancing over at Wanda. While there was anger in Pietro's eyes, Wanda had something wicked in hers. She sat on her bed and began running her fingers up and down her left forearm, gritting her teeth as the Tesseract began to stitch her bone back together.

"Wow," Pietro said, crouching down in front of her and staring at the blue wisps around her fingers. "That's pretty cool. You know what else is pretty?" He looked up and winked.

"Pietro," Wanda said reprimandingly, though she sounded more amused than anything.

Danielle still didn't say anything. She pulled the energy back inside herself and gave her arm a few test turns. Satisfied that she was properly healed, she laid down and pulled her blanket up over herself.

"Huh. Fine then."

"Maybe she can't talk?" Wanda asked quietly

Danielle kept her eyes closed, but she was turned out to face the room and she could hear every word they said and, if she listened close enough, she could hear the way that Wanda's heart constantly skipped at irregular intervals and the way Pietro's heart was way to fast.

The only reason she got any sleep was because, eventually, healing herself caught up with her.

* * *

 

It was Strucker who discovered that they weren't sure if she could die. She'd already broken every bone in her body at least once, suffered internal damage to every possible organ, and bled out more times than was really socially acceptable.

But it was when she slipped up on a dodge and ended up with a bullet lodged in her skull that she realized the full extent of what all of that could mean.

She came back to reality slowly and bit back a whimper at the marching band bashing around in her head with white hot instruments. Danielle listened to the noises around her before identifying the voices of those that she recognized, including Strucker directly to her left. He said something about marking down the time—forty-eight minutes and seven seconds—and then her collar gave her a slight jolt.

"Up, Four Blue, we are not done."

Danielle forced herself to move as if she was a machine on autopilot. She stumbled to her feet, blinked through the red staining her vision. Strucker pressed a gun into her hands and turned her toward the range. Down at the end stood three shivering agents.

"Follow the heartbeats," Strucker ordered. Then he blindfolded her.

Complete silence fell in the room, which was the only reason she could strain herself to listen. Her targets' hearts were easy to identify, beating ten times faster than anyone else's. She took three quick shots and then reached up, pulling off her blindfold. Two were down, the last one was holding his shoulder and screaming. Danielle frowned.

And she shot him again.

* * *

 

She woke up to escape the avalanche burying Bucky alive to find that she'd put herself wrist-deep in the wall and the twins were staring at her with wide eyes, the whites clearly visible through the dark. Danielle pulled her lips back in a snarl until they dropped their gazes. Danielle pulled her fist from the wall and brushed off the crumbled plaster and concrete stuck there with blood. Frowning, she grabbed her sheet and scrubbed her hand clean.

"You good?"

She ignored him and leaned over the side of the bed, retrieving one of her books. Danielle sat back and flipped open to the last page she'd been on, studying plants indigenous to India. She held her left hand over the page and a soft blue glow illuminated the words.

"Right. Okay. You know, if you can't talk, fine. But you're obviously not deaf. You don't have to ignore us."

She flipped him off and then turned the page.

"How do you do that?" It was Wanda this time time. "The light? How?"

Danielle looked up and closed her hand, the light shutting off. She shifted around so her back was to them and then drew the light up again.

"You know, you'll have to talk to us eventually.”

* * *

 

Strucker started bringing the twins on combat training, citing something about how they could learn from her. But when Danielle won the first match in fifteen seconds by breaking her opponent's hip and Strucker turned expectantly to the twins, the two of them just dumbly shook their heads. So Strucker ordered Pietro up, reminded him not to use his powers, and set him against a different agent.

Pietro started losing shamefully quick. His opponent moved in to finally sweep his feet out from under him and Pietro blurred, reappearing behind the guy and decking him. Strucker hissed. "I said no powers. Smith, out." His gaze cut to Danielle. "If you're so insistent on using your powers, then go against someone who can match you. Powers allowed. Fight until forfeit. Begin."

Pietro grinned and blurred. Danielle sighed and flickered three feet backwards. When he predictably stopped in front of her, she swept his feet out and caught him up in a choke. Almost immediately, he tapped against her arm until she let him go. Strucker frowned.

"Disappointing," was the assessment he came up with. "Four Blue, show them again how it's done."


	18. Stars, hide your fires (let not light see my black and deep desires)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from Macbeth by William Shakespeare.

After she passed out for the fifth time that day, Strucker ordered her to return to her room. She moved down the hallway, scratching at the collar around her neck. And then she paused, glancing back. Danielle flickered and reappeared down the hall. She drew back, eying the bustling area down below. Beyond that was the door that she knew led to the outside. Danielle bit her lip and scratched at her collar again, slinking into the shadows to hide.

She gripped at the collar and charged the Tesseract to her hands and wrenched. With a creak, the collar twisted but didn't break. She felt a flood of energy back into her body and the ache in her bones vanished, replaced by the roar of the noises and lights and smells around her. Danielle took a struggling breath against the new way the collar was bent up against her throat.

She'd never flickered to somewhere she couldn't see before, but she had to try. Danielle focused on the unknown beyond outside the wall and slipped right through the spatial rip. She yelped in surprise when she found herself falling from a good ways in the air. Danielle landed, but the impact was mostly softened by snow. She took a moment to catch her breath. Then she looked up and flicked away, landing again behind a tree.

An alarm went off.

Danielle swore and flickered away again, but she wasn't fully recovered from her multiple fainting spells. She flickered up into a tree and clung there, trying to catch her breath.

"Four Blue, I do hope you realize that I am not as easily fooled as this. We were alerted, of course, when your collar went offline."

She looked down, freezing, and found Strucker and several guards walking among the trees in search. Danielle stayed perfectly still.

"You realize, of course, that you have a tracker in you as well. With that, we have no chance of losing you. Also . . . the collar is designed to emit a constant electric charge immediately upon complete loss of power. Which, if I'm right, should be fairly soon if you did enough damage to it."

 _Liar, liar, liar,_ she hissed mentally. But she knew that Strucker never lied. He preferred to stab in the front, using truth as a devastating weapon to manipulate and kill. She lifted a hand to her twisted collar and fear wrapped itself around her throat.

"Don't worry, Four Blue. I can wait.”

* * *

 

Danielle was disappointed when she woke up again. She let out a long, tired breath. "Why won't you just let me die?" she whispered.

"You know you can't die."

At Strucker's voice, Danielle jerked around. Or at least she tried. The metal cuffs digging into her skin kept her from moving. Danielle writhed on the table, fighting against the clamps holding her head in place. Staring down at the floor, she searched for any hint of access to the Tesseract; she found nothing but agony.

"What are you going to do with me?"

"Teach you a lesson. You seem to be under the impression that you are all these other things: a daughter, a Stark, an . . . innocent. How many of your fellow innocents have you killed? Could you really call yourself one of them anymore?"

There was a long stretch of silence. Electricity sparked around her neck and _burned._ She screamed.

"Answer the question. Are you an innocent or are you not?"

"I . . . ." Danielle bit on her lip to stop herself. If she could have, she would have shaken her head.

More electricity. More screaming.

"Answer. Which are you?"

"No."

Pain. Screaming.

"Answer."

"I . . . I'm not."

"Exactly. And you know what you _are?"_

She couldn't stop the whimper twisting inside her. "Wh-what am I?"

"Take a look."

A man, not Strucker, crouched down in front of her and brandished a red hot pocket in her face. But instead of a sharp end, the Hydra symbol was staring back at her.

"You're Hydra's," Strucker hissed, close to her ear. And then she heard him quickly step away. "Go ahead. Make sure she doesn't forget."

The man in front of her moved and Danielle jerked against her shackles. "Don't you dare!" she screamed. "Keep that away from me! Don't you—"

Her screaming demands turned to an agonized wail and jerked and pulled and twisted to try to get away from the heat boring itself into her shoulder. Her wail turned to sobs and that turned to her begging for it to stop. The pressure was gone, but the pain was still there.

Strucker knelt down in front of her. "Do you understand now?"

She whimpered.

"What are you?"

Danielle screwed her eyes shut and felt the salt sticking down her face.

"What are you?"

"I'm . . . Hydra’s."

* * *

 

"Kill him."

Wanda hesitated, frozen with her red wrapped around her victim. "I— Are you sure?"

Strucker watched with a frowned. "Stop." The moment the red fell away, he glanced at Danielle. "Kill him."

Her collar was still tight around her throat and she only felt the pinch under her skin, not the crawling energy. So instead, she stepped forwards. The man's eyes widened in fear and he scrambled back. Danielle caught his arm and tripped him, slamming him into the floor. With her knee on his back to keep him down, she gripped his head. And she snapped his neck.

"Thank you for the example." Strucker looked back at Wanda. "Did you learn anything?"

Wanda stared at Danielle with wide eyes and only nodded. Danielle hated herself for the terror she saw there.


	19. You have been my friend (that in itself is a tremendous thing)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White.

Pietro clutched his broken arm to his chest the entire way back to their room. Wanda fussed over him, helping him to his bed as if he couldn't make it on his own. Danielle hunched over a book on poisons and did her best to ignore them.

But then Pietro laid down and whimpered as his arm jolted. Danielle groaned and snapped her book shut. "C'mon, seriously?" She slammed the book down. "Next time, don't rely on your speed as your only skill."

Pietro jerked and turned his head to stare at her. Wanda's eyes went wide. "You . . . actually _can_ talk?"

"Of course I can. I was just hoping that if I shut up long enough, you two would go away." She dropped her book to the floor and shoved herself to her feet. "Sit up. I'll fix your arm."

Pietro moved hesitantly. Danielle stopped in front of him and bent down to run her fingers along his broken skin. "Hold still. This is going to hurt."

"How bad can it—" He broke off with a scream and jerked away.

Danielle pulled back and scowled. "I said hold still. If you move, I could permanently remove half your bone. Is that what you want?"

He whimpered and shook his head.

"Good. Now _hold still._ I won't be long." She pushed the Tesseract energy into his arms like a needle and dragged it through his bones. It was different than helping Bucky; there was resistance here, a lack of trust that made it almost like she was trying to wallow through mud to her goal. She heard Pietro whine and he threw his head back, eyes screwed shut. "Don't think about it," she ordered, brow furrowed. "And next time, pay attention. Wilkins likes to feint with a kick so that you're distracted while he goes for your weaker arm."

"I've never seen him do that with you," Wanda commented.

"I don't have a weak arm. Ambidextrous." She finished and straightened. "Why are you two here? How'd they get you?"

"We volunteered."

"And? What do you want?"

Wanda's lip curled and Pietro's eyes darkened. "Tony Stark's head on a platter."

Danielle paused. "Ah." A part of her was relieved that her father was already dead, though she hated it. Because if he was still alive, she would feel disgusting doing nothing but sitting back and watching his murderers get trained to kill him.

"And you? Why did you volunteer?"

Danielle looked up and let her lips curl into a sneer. "I didn't volunteer. They stole me from my home, from my family. There was no _volunteering."_ She snapped around and marched back over to her bed. Knowing that she somewhat looked like a petulant child, she flopped down with her back to them, though keenly aware of exactly where they were.

"Aren't you at least going to tell us your name?"

“No."

* * *

 

Abruptly, their simultaneous training sessions—Wanda and Pietro were practicing power-influenced combat while Strucker had Danielle practice use of her serum-enhanced brain in solving puzzles and problems and questions just by looking. An agent entered the room, leaned over to Strucker, and whispered in his ear. Danielle kept her eyes ahead, but her serum-enhanced ears heard it.

"The helicarriers have fallen. Hydra is exposed."

"Hail Hydra," Strucker murmured in return, nodding and watching as the agent left. Immediately after, he excused himself and order for them to return to their room. The twins rushed to obey. Danielle paused in the hallway, letting the chaos of anxious Hydra workers running around her. She frowned and turned, marching after where Strucker had gone. She slammed open the door to the security room he'd entered.

He looked up and narrowed his eyes. "Four Blue, what are you doing here?

"My helicarriers failed?" she asked doubtfully.

"Your— No." He straightened and adjusted his monocles. "The helicarriers worked beautifully. Unfortunately, that bastard Captain and his team worked better, even against the Asset?"

"The Asset?" She stiffened. "And what happened to him. Did he stop them?"

Struck frowned. "No. The helicarriers fell, and so did he. Now I believe I ordered you back to your room."

Obediently, she backed out of the room and wandered blankly down the hallway. Pietro and Wanda tried to speak to her when she got there, but she slumped into her bed and fell into disturbed nightmares instead.

* * *

 

"You did better today," Danielle murmured, an arm around Wanda to keep her supported as they walked down the hall. "Much better."

"Thanks to you." Pietro winced, entire body shuddering in pain. "You can fix me, right?"

"Of course. I'll fix both of you up. But then—"

"You'll have to take a nap forever. Yes, I know the pattern."

Danielle shoved open the door and let them inside. "Sit down. Wanda just has a sprained ankle, so I'll fix her first." She helped the girl to her bed and gently eased her down. "How do you feel?"

"Tired," Wanda murmured.

"Well, you can get some sleep as soon as I'm done, okay?" Danielle knelt down and gently worked off the woman's left shoe. "I'll try to make this quick. There wasn't too much damage." She ran her fingers over the red skin. "The swelling is making it look worse than it is. Got something to bite down on?"

"Um, yeah." Wanda dragged up the corner of her blanket and folded it before sliding it between her teeth.

"Good." Danielle closed her eyes and focused on gluing the ligaments back together. She heard Wanda start moaning painfully and frowned, trying to keep back the heat from the Tesseract. She finished with the ligaments and gently soothed the swelling down a bit before opening her eyes and pulling away. "How do you feel?"

Wanda pulled the blanket from her mouth. "Thank—" She lost the words in a yawn.

Danielle smiled and pushed herself up. Putting a hand on Wanda's shoulder, she said, "Go ahead and get to sleep. Pietro will be all better when you wake up again."

"Thank you," Wanda mumbled again, pulling off her other shoe. Then she drew the blanket over herself and lied down.

Danielle pushed herself to her feet and swayed with exhaustion for a second before moving to Pietro's bed. "Sit up," she ordered. "I'll fix your ribs."

"And my hand?"

"Of course." She splayed her fingers across his chest and he hissed in pain at the contact. "Do you have something to bite down on?"

"Actually, I think just talking will help distract me."

She frowned up at him. "If you bite off your own tongue, it's not my fault." Then she pushed the Tesseract energy into his chest.

He let out a whine of pain and his words became carefully controlled. "You never actually told us your name. You know that, right?"

"I know."

"Why have—" He groaned as she snapped his sternum back in place. "Why haven't you?"

"I have reasons."

"We have to call you something, don't we?"

She stitched his last rib together and then shifted, to work on his hand, struggling to keep her eyes open at this point. "No. No, you don't."

"That's— Holy shit!"

"I told you to bite down on something," she mused absently. "Why do you want my name so badly?"

"Well," —his entire body jerked with a flinch at the bones in his wrist grinding against each other as she moved them back in place— "can't be friends if I don't know what to call you, can I?"

"Do we have to be friends?"

"Yeah, I think so." He watched as she pulled away from his hand. Pietro gave her a grin. "Well?"

She considered it for a long moment, yawning. Dragging a hand down her face, she thought through her options. Why not? "Danielle," she finally offered, shoving herself up.

Pietro's grin widened. "It's nice to meet you, Ellie.”

* * *

 

The base was hit with a high power EMP by some Hydra defectors and the loss of power made everything resorted to its default setting. For the three of them, it meant that their door locked and wouldn't open and so they'd been left alone for going on twenty-eight hours. At the beginning, Danielle had thought that she would be able to move the tumblers and open the door using the Tesseract, but the EMP reset the remote controlling her collar and cut off all her connection with the cube. The only reason her collar survived the attack was because the Tesseract was what powered it.

So here they were, the three of them alone and hungry in their room. Pietro and Danielle, the two with enhanced metabolisms, were feeling it the worst, though all three of them were shivering from the failed heater in the midst of a northern winter. Danielle had her blanket tied tightly around her shoulders as she hunched, shivering, over a book on Xhosa and scratched out in the margins notes for her learning.

"How many?"

She glanced up at where they were huddled together under their blankets, holding each other on Wanda's bed in an attempt to keep each other warm. "How may what?"

"Languages. I mean, that's the third or fourth language we've seen you working on, and Xhosa isn't what most people would start with."

"Insightful, Wanda. And to answer your question, plenty."

"That's not a number."

"No, it's not." Danielle turned the page and then held her pen between her teeth so she could use both hands to fix her blanket.

"Why are you so uptight?" Pietro asked curiously. "What, are you scared of us?"

"No, I just don't like sharing information. Especially when I don't trust you."

"You don't trust us."

"No." She scratched out another note and tested the some of a few Xhosa syllables on her tongue. "Now let me work.”

* * *

 

Fifty-one hours found Danielle curled up with her blanket—which had torn straight down the middle at one point when she'd yanked it a little too harshly around herself and her strength won out over the blanket's tenacity—shivering and doing her best to keep her teeth from clattering. She'd long since given up trying to study. Her stomach ached and her collar felt too tight and her exhaustion just somehow made her senses louder and stronger and the only remedy was sleep.

Unfortunately, sleep hadn't agreed with her for a long time.

"You're going to freeze."

"Your IQ never ceases to astound me, Pietro," Danielle muttered.

Wanda made a soft, worried sound. "Come join us. We still have no idea how long it's going to be for the power."

"Again. Brilliant."

"Just shut up and share body heat, Ellie," Pietro interrupted. "It's better for everyone that way."

Danielle sat up and leveled a dark glare at them, curling back her lips.

Pietro just smirked. "That would be intimidating if I didn't see you run into the wall mid-yawn the other day."

"Closing my eyes while yawning doesn't mean I couldn't still kill you without breaking a sweat."

"Intimidating, truly. I'm shaking."

"You're shaking because it's cold."

"And so are you."

Danielle frowned, weighing it all in her head. She really didn't want the physical contact—the thought made her skin crawl—and she didn't trust them at all, but they were right when they said she was going to freeze. She shuffled off of her bed and stepped across the room, eying them. They pulled apart, making space between the two of them. Alarm bells went off in her head—too contained, not an easy escape, giving them too much control—but she slid in between them anyway.

"Jeez, Ellie, you're freezing," Pietro gasped in surprise the moment her bare feet touched him.

"My serum makes me run cold," she said simply, curling gratefully into the heat they provided. She could already feel her fingers tingling as they warmed up. She cleared her throat. "Thank you."

"Of course," Wanda said softly, turning so she could run her fingers gently through Danielle's hair. "I know you don't like us, but . . . we're here for you."

Danielle didn't answer that, but she did close her eyes and press into Wanda's hand.

Pietro laughed softly. "She means it, you know. Besides, I'll do anything for a pretty girl."


	20. At the still point (there the dance is)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from Four Quartets by T. S. Elliot.

She awoke without the familiar sound of the twins' loud breathing. Danielle carefully kept her own breathing steady and thought through what she had available.Her head ached painfully and she couldn't remember ever falling asleep. Blunt force trauma? In fact, the last thing she could remember was the power coming back on and Strucker escorting her from her room and then . . . nothing.

She was on a soft bed. Far softer than anything she'd slept on in her time with Hydra. Not as soft as what she'd had at the Tower or in Malibu, but just soft enough to be unfamiliar and uncomfortable. There was a gentle hum to her right. Some sort of AC unit? Her collar felt too tight and she couldn't feel a drop of the Tesseract, despite the fact that Strucker had loosened control again once power was back on.

Someone had messed with her collar.

The air smelled stale and faintly . . . lemon. There was water running somewhere a little ways away but she didn't hear anyone near her. Danielle carefully opened her eyes.

Motel room, cheap with peeling wallpaper. The faux wood table was damp on the top and she figured that the smell of lemon came from whatever wipes had been used to clean it. On the second hotel bed sat an unzipped duffle bag. The sound of running water was coming from the bathroom. A shower. One other occupant, otherwise occupied.

Danielle folded back the blankets on top of herself and slid carefully off the bed. She stayed silent as she stepped across to the other bed, where she carefully peered inside. Guns, ammo, knives. Danielle frowned. Weapons, but none giving the identity of who it was that had her. Had Strucker handed her off for some reason? Why couldn't she remember what had happened?

The rumbling of water through the pipes shut down. Danielle snatched up a gun and hurriedly checked that it was loaded before slipping back into her bed and closing her eyes. She didn't know who it was, but at least now she had the element of surprise on her side.

After a moment, the door opened with a quiet squeak of the hinges, but she couldn't hear footsteps. Beyond where the footsteps should have been, however, she heard the strong, steady heartbeat of her captor. Off to her left, she heard the shuffling of the duffle bag and the clicking as clips and guns tapped against each other. A pause.

"Are you planning on shooting me?"

Danielle stilled, not because he'd realized she'd taken a gun or even because he'd spoke at all. She stilled because she knew that voice. It wasn't just the collar making it hard to breathe anymore.

"Well?"

Danielle hesitantly opened her eyes and sat up, clutching the gun like a lifeline. She stared at him. "Winter?"

He tilted his head to the side but didn't say anything. She raked her gaze over him, spending a little extra time focusing on how his left arm—hidden by the sleeve of the too-large hoodie—was limp against his side. Hands shaking, she held out the gun and let him take it from her. "They . . . they said you died. What— I—"

"Breathe," he ordered, returning the gun to the duffle bag. "Do you know what day it is?"

"Do I—" Danielle hesitated. "I don't. I haven't for a while."

He stepped in front of her and braced her chin, frowning at her collar. "March 19th. 2014. I haven't seen you for about four months."

"But—" She reached up and danced her fingers along the collar. "But what happened?"

"They wiped me. I forgot about you. It took me a little too long to remember. I started looking for you at the old base and tried to find your trail. Strucker figured out I was coming for you and decided to move you. I caught you in transport."

"But I don't remember anything."

"I'd be surprised if you did. They had you hopped up on enough anesthesia to keep down an elephant. It's taken you a whole day to wake up from it." His frown deepened. "Can you get this off? I stopped any outside signal so they couldn't track it, but I can't find the release mechanism."

"I— Yes. Do you have tools?"

He nodded and turned away to dig through the duffle bag again.

"My head really hurts."

"Probably because I cut it open." He turned back and held a small tool case out to her.

"You—" Danielle's eyes widened and she reached up for her head. After a moment, she felt the bandage across the right side of her skull, a couple inches above her ear. Her hair was short again, shorn like it had been when she first went to Hydra. "Why?"

"Tracker. I had to get it out. They think you're currently on your way to South Africa."

"Oh." Danielle brushed her fingers over the bandage one more time and then reached for the tools. "Mirror?"

"Bathroom."

"Got it." Danielle pushed herself to her feet and clutched the toolkit to her chest. Bucky supported her elbow and she heard his heart skip a bit when she stumbled forward. "I'm okay," she promised. "What happened to you? They said you went down with the helicarriers."

"I did. And then I got out and ran. I . . . still don't remember a lot of things. I remember that you're important enough to save, but . . . ."

"Right." She leaned against the bathroom sink and opened the toolbox. When she tilted her chin up to get a good look at the collar in the mirror, she frowned. Danielle dragged her fingers over it before finding a panel on the side. "Okay, here we are." She reached down and picked up the flat-head screwdriver. "Do you remember your name?"

"Yes, I'm—"

"James 'Bucky' Barnes?" she interrupted, slipping the screwdriver in the slot and prying the panel up.

"You . . . knew?"

"They wouldn't let me say anything. But yeah, I knew." She tossed the panel aside and turned her head to study the inner wiring. "Steve talked about you a lot."

"You know . . . him?"

Danielle lowered the screwdriver and met his gaze in the mirror. "My last name's Stark. Steve worked with my dad before he . . . . Um, before . . . ."The screwdriver slipped from between her fingers and clattered to the floor. Danielle clawed for purchase at the sink and her lungs constricted. Her knees gave out.

Bucky caught her around the waist and helped her down to the ground. "Breathe," he ordered again, pulling her hands so that they were pressed against his chest. So that she could feel his own breaths. "Breathe."

Obey, obey, obey. She clutched at the hand holding hers and rested her head forward against his shoulder, forcing air into her lungs. The world spinning around her slowed, and slowed, and stopped.

"There you go. That's better, Nell." His hand pulled away from hers and rested on her head instead. "Breathe."

Danielle pulled back and sniffled, rubbing her hand against her nose. "I, I need to finish getting this off." She struggled to her feet and took the screwdriver he'd picked up for her. "Thank you." She leaned forward again to resume studying the wires. "What happened to your arm?"

"Damaged while getting you out. It's fine."

Danielle frowned and glanced at him. "I'll fix it." Then she picked up the cutters and clipped two of the wires. Her collar hissed and spread apart, loosening and revealing the hinge hidden inside itself. She released the latch and pried the collar open and off. "Oh my god," she rasped, finally able to breathe properly again. She squeezed her eyes shut at the rush of energy into her body, hissing at the way it ground against her bones

It took a minute for the nausea to pass. Danielle opened her eyes and stared at herself in the mirror, lifting a hand to gently touch at the raw, red scarring encircling her neck. "It's gone," she breathed. Her eyes were heavy and the energy inside her was swirling aimlessly, dragging her down. "It's gone."

"Nell? Nell, look at me. What— No, no. Breathe. Look at me. Nell!”

* * *

 

She awoke to someone holding her hand. She froze, frantically trying to figure out what was going on. She couldn't breathe, and yet she couldn't feel her collar constricting her neck either. Her heart sped up, tattooing itself on her ribcage.

"Whoa, careful. Breathe." The hand holding her squeezed. "You're safe. It's just me. You're safe."

"W-winter?" Danielle opened her eyes, wincing against the expected light but instead being greeted by darkness. "Wha— Oh." She clutched at his hand. "S-sorry. I think that . . . . Just getting all of the Tesseract back all at once . . . ."

"You should eat something," he said, pulling away. When she tightened her hold on him, he said, "I'm getting you a granola bar." When she finally let him go, he turned on the lamp at her bedside and moved to dig through the duffle bag. He came up with the granola bar and awkwardly unwrapped it with one hand.

Danielle sat up and took it, eying him. "Get the tools," she murmured.

He frowned. "Why?"

"I'll fix your arm." She bit into the granola bar and wrinkled her nose at the way her stomach turned. Danielle watched as Bucky moved to collect the tools from the bathroom. By the time he'd returned, she'd forced herself to swallow the rest of the bar. She reached out and makes gimme hands for the tool kit. "Turn on the main light and sit down," she ordered. "I need to take a look."

He did as she asked and slipped off his long sleeve shirt so she could see his arm. Some of the metal was a bit dented and tarnished. But she focused in on the area that was missing a panel and exposing wires.

"You have a couple cut wires," she murmured. "Give me a moment and I'll have you good as new.”

* * *

 

She'd eaten seven bowls of oatmeal in the time it took him to return. Bucky closed the motel door tightly behind himself and turned, only to eye the empty oatmeal packets across the table. He raised an eyebrow. "Did you go through an entire bag of brown sugar?"

"I like sweet things." She tossed the styrofoam bowl in the trash. "Whatcha get me?"

"Makeup to try to disguise you and some clothes so you're not stuck forever in Hydra grey." He set the Walmart bags on the table. "Also, a backpack for your things."

"Sweet." She snatched up the bag of makeup and moved to the bathroom. "Where are we headed?" she asked, leaning into the mirror and working on concealing the scar collaring her.

"Depends on what you want to do."

She paused, studying the way that her hands were steady against her throat despite the trembling in her head. "Hydra. I want them gone."

It was quiet for a moment while he considered that. Then Bucky nodded. "I know there's a base somewhere in Montpellier. We're close enough to there. I'll pull out the computer and get started."

"Do you have enough guns for me?"

"And knives," he assured her. "We'll be fine."

She finished hiding the collar scar and the ones on her hands. Then she packed the makeup away and moved back into the main room. She dug through the clothes he'd gotten, packing it all away in her backpack and keeping out one set of clothing. She changed into the jeans and boots and stripped off her shirt. She'd just finished pulling on the bra when she felt a cold hand against her back. Danielle stiffened and looked back at him. "What?"

He was frowning down at her shoulder. His fingers moved to press into the sensitive skin there and she hissed. "When did they do this to you?" he demanded, voice as cold as his hand.

It took her a moment to realize that he was tracing the brand. "Oh. After they took me from you. I tried to run away."

He pressed his fingers into the burn, putting pressure on the entire outline as he traced it. Then he leaned his head forward and rested his forehead against her shoulder. "Sorry. It won't happen again. I promise."

She hummed in response and waited patiently until he pulled away. Then she tugged on her sweater and turned to face him. "Winter, what—" She paused with afrown. "Um . . . do you want me to call you Bucky now?"

"No," came his instant response. "No."

"Oh." She smiled. "Okay." Danielle tilted her head to the side. "What do you remember from being Bucky?"

"I . . . ." He frowned deeply. "Not much, yet. Bits and pieces. I'm not sure if most of it is memory or just from being at the museum."

"You're in a museum?"

"Steve is."

"Oh. That makes sense. Well, what are you absolutely sure is _you_ remembering?"

He contemplated that question for a long moment. Then he nodded. "Dancing. I think I— Yes. I definitely remember that, and it wasn't in the museum."

Danielle light up and reached for his hands. "Dance with me!"

He took her hands and stared at her.

"C'mon, please? I was learning how to dance for when Steve came back for New Years, but I . . . guess I wasn't there anymore. I've never actually gotten to dance with anyone."

"We don't have any music."

"Remind me later to put Spotify in your arm."

He gave her a confused look and adjusted to curl his right hand between her shoulders. "Alright. Let's start slow, then, since you've never danced with someone before."

Danielle smiled and followed his slow footwork, letting her head rest forward against his shoulder. "Hey, Winter?" she whispered.

"Hmm?"

"You aren't gonna leave me, right? I don't want to be alone again."

"I won't. Never."


	21. There are only the pursued (and the tired)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  
> Please keep in mind that all translations are done using Google Translate, and so I’m well aware they aren’t 100% accurate.

Danielle adjusted the green beanie and glanced in the mirror. "There. All dressed up and ready to head off to Montpellier."

"Hold on," Bucky murmured, digging in his pocket for a second. Then he leaned forward and messed with the edge of her beanie. She felt warm metal rest against her forehead. When she looked in the mirror again, she found the pearl hair clip fastened to it.

She smiled. "Thanks." She pushed past him and stooped to retrieve her backpack. "Ready to go scam someone out of a car?"

"You sure you can do this?" he asked curiously, slinging his duffle bag across his shoulders.

"Absolutely. There's a shady place seven blocks over. I promise you that we'll have a car in no time, no problem. Rumlow mighta been a bitch, but he taught me some useful things. Cash?"

He pulled out a stack of euros. "Two thousand is the most you can drop on this thing, got it?"

"Crystal." She frowned, wrinkling her nose. "Wait, no, that didn't quite— Got it. Yep."

He stared at her for a long moment and then his lips curled into a fond smile. "I'll go check us out at the front desk. Use a few of those bills to grab us breakfast. I'll meet you at the car lot."

"Got it!" She ducked out through the door and headed off for the convenience store. After getting enough food to feed an army, or just two super soldiers—fruit cups, coffee, oatmeal, almonds, hummus, pretzels, and plenty of hot dogs—she headed off for the car dealership. She took a sip of coffee and let out a happy whine. "Oh, black as my soul caffeine, how I've missed you."

Danielle grinned at Bucky as she approached where he was lingering just outside the lot. "Breakfast and coffee," she announced happily. "Eat up, Isaac."

"Thanks," he murmured, taking the bag she proffered. "You gonna do this?"

"Hmm? Of course. Follow my lead." She moved forward and smiled widely to accentuate the pink painting her lips. "Salut! Monsieur Bouchard?" [Hello! Mister Bouchard?]

The man looked up from the clipboard he was studying. The moment he saw them, a grin split his face. "Salut! Que puis-je faire pour vous?" [Hello! What can I do for you?]

"Je m'appelle Emily et voici mon frère Isaac. Nous avons besoin d'une voiture." [My name is Emily and this is my brother Isaac. We need a car.] Danielle smiled and put a hand on Bucky's shoulder as she spoke. She flicked her gaze across him, seeing what she could learn about him that her online investigation hadn't already revealed. "Quelque chose de fiable. Neuf ou légèrement utilisé, de préférence." [Something reliable. New or lightly used, preferably.]

"J'aimerais aider. Quel prix regardez-vous?" [I'd love to help. What price tag are you looking at?] The man smiled, though there was something a bit off about it, and he lowered his clipboard.

She dragged her gaze across his dirty wedding bang and back up to his face. "Mille deux cent." [Twelve hundred.]

He laughed a little. "Pour obtenir quelque chose de réel, il faudra dépenser un peu plus que cela, ma chérie." [To get something of real quality you'll have to spend a bit more than that, my dear.]

Danielle raised an eyebrow. "Onze cents et je ne dis pas à Aline que tu couches avec ta voisine." [Eleven hundred and I don't tell Aline you've been sleeping with your neighbor.]

And just like that, his face lost all of its color. "Je, je ne sais pas de quoi tu parles." [I, I don't know what you're talking about.] As he spoke, he stumbled a step back.

Danielle smiled comfortingly and put a cold edge into it. "Dix cents. Je ne parlerai pas à Aline de toi et tu ne diras rien à personne de nous. Si vous le faites, je le saurai. Et vous ne voulez pas qu'elle connaisse aussi la secrétaire, n'est-ce pas?" [Ten hundred. I won't tell Aline about you and you don't tell anyone about us. If you do, I'll know. And you don't want her knowing about the secretary too, do you?] She kept her voice even and quiet as she spoke, smile still intact.

Bouchard held out a shaky hand. "Camry. Seulement quatre ans. Bon état, promis." [Camry. Only four years old. Good condition, I promise.]

She counted out the money and handed it over. "Clés." [Keys]

He shook his head. "Dans mon bureau! Je-" [In my office! I—]

"Quelle voiture?" [Which car?]

He pointed at the blue Camry a few rows over. Danielle nodded to Bucky. "Go with him and get the keys. I'll take care of the car."

He gave an impressed whistle. "Yes, ma'am. And to think I doubted you."

She smiled proudly, though quickly snatched the look away when she glanced back at Bouchard. "Donne la clé à Isaac et ensuite, oublie nous. Compris?" [Give Isaac the key and then forget about us. Understood?]

He nodded fervently, pale and sweaty. "Oui, oui, oui!”

* * *

 

"Good news," Danielle said the moment she closed the door to the hotel room. "The store had lots of sweet and sugary foods to fulfill my freedom of choice cravings and I bought all of them. Bad news, I'm probably going to get a cavity." She dropped the bags at the foot of his bed, selected a bag of powdered donuts, and sat down next to him. "What have you been up to?"

"Deleting all of Hydra's information on you from where it was leaked on the internet. I know the codewords you were filed under, so hopefully I'm the only, or one of the few, to find these files. Soon, the only place they'll hopefully exist is on our USB."

"Once it's on the internet, nothing can ever truly disappear," Danielle mused thoughtfully. "Donut?"

"No."

She frowned at the steel in his voice and leaned into him to get a look at what he was reading: Strucker's notes on her revival times. "You know that I'm okay, right?"

"Are you, though?"

"As okay as I can be." She shifted and managed to tuck herself under his arm. His metal hand came down to rest on her head and he took off her beanie, tossing it away. Then he spread his cold fingers over her scalp. "I am. I promise."

"I made you into a killer," he whispered.

"Winter," she breathed, twisting so she could look up at him. She smiled sadly and lowered the bag of donuts. Then she reached up and ran her hand through his hair. She trailed her fingers down his jaw and then supported his chin so he couldn't look away. "You didn't make me into anything I wasn't asking to be." She hesitated and her hand dropped to curl in his shirt. "Do you . . . ." She cleared her throat roughly. "When you look at me, do you see a monster?" she asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

Bucky froze and she took that moment to listen to the steady _ba-dum ba-dum_ of his heart. Then he closed the computer and shoved it off his lap before turning to curl protectively around her. "No," he whispered. "I don't. I really don't."

"I've done bad things. And they didn't even take my memories."

"You're not a monster, Nell. People can make bad choices, but monsters can't make good ones.”

* * *

 

He locked the door tightly and peered through the peephole to make sure no one had followed him. "I found the base. It's about five and a half miles outside the city." He turned. "We'll need to do more recon before—" Bucky faltered and frowned. "What is it?"

Danielle didn't look up from where she was curled up on her bed, clutching on of her pillows to her chest. "Magazine," she mumbled.

He paused by the table and studied the crumpled magazine there. It was open to a page titled _An exclusive look into Iron Man's daily routine!_ Bucky picked the magazine up and flicked to the next page. He frowned. "I . . . thought you dad was dead. That's your dad, right? Tony Stark?"

"Yeah," she rasped. "They told me he was dead. They, they convinced me. I believed them like some sort of stupid, naive idiot."

"Shush. You're not an idiot." He dropped the magazine back on the table. Bucky moved to her bed and sat down next to her. "Look at me." When she didn't obey and instead just offered up a pitiful whine, he sighed and poked her. "Look at me."

Finally, she rolled over and looked up at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy and her cheeks were wet.

"Do you want to go home to him?"

"I . . . ." Danielle sniffled and rubbed her eyes. She shuffled forward and slid her arms around him, burying her face in his middle. "Would I be a bad person if I said no?"

"Shh, no, of course not." He spread his fingers across the nape of her neck and gently worked at the tight muscles there. "Just tell me why."

"I don't . . . I don't want him to see me like this. I— I know you said I'm not a monster, but that doesn't mean I'm not different than what he remembers. That doesn't mean that I want him to see what Hydra did to me."

"He's your father. He won't care. You said he loves you, right?"

"Right," she rasped. "But . . . I love him too. And that's why I don't want to make him see me like this."

Bucky frowned at her sadly. "I think he'd want to see you. But," he said, holding up a hand as she opened her mouth to protest. "I'll go with your decision. I said I wouldn't leave you and I won't."

She shifted so her head was resting on his thigh and she reached up to curl her fingers around his hand. “Thanks."

* * *

 

Danielle frowned and rubbed the Cheeto dust off on her jeans before turning the page. "Huh."

Bucky looked up from the folder he was studying. "What?"

"Just some stuff about the twins I told you about. At least, I'm assuming that's who this is referencing. It's documenting moving the scepter to Strucker."

"Scepter?"

When he reached for the paper, she handed it to him. "Scepter that Loki had in New York. Used it to mind control people. But from this stuff . . . . It's looking more similar to the Tesseract than brainwashing. I doubt they've made the connection themselves, but these energy patterns? The nervous system dampening effect? These are all things I found when Selvig was running tests on me."

"Didn't they run tests on you, though?"

"Not those types of tests. As soon as they found that removing the Tesseract would kill me and possibly implode the cube, they stopping caring so much about what it was and instead cared more about what they could do with it." She took the paper back and uncapped her highlighter. "You know we can't carry all of this information around with us all the time, right?"

"Of course. What's your plan?"

Danielle hesitated, chewing on her lip. "I think . . . I think I know some people who could really benefit from having these files in their hands."


	22. There is nothing (hope)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin.

"Sir, Captain Rogers is requesting your presence on the common floor."

"Not now, J," Tony mumbled. "Help me look for anything identifiable in this picture instead. Anywhere that could tell us where it was taken."

"Sir, I have assisted you in this endeavor twenty-three times already. The background of this photograph has not changed. I'm sorry to say that I don't believe that this one picture will help us find her."

Tony took a long, deep breath, staring unblinking at the photo projected in front of him: Danielle unconscious on a metal table, hair buzzed, surgical mask over her face, and bags under her eyes. "I need to find her. Just help me."

"I do believe Captain Rogers is insistent."

"JAR—"

"A package has arrived and Captain Rogers believes the contents could be related to Hydra, but he's unable to open it without damaging whatever is inside."

Tony froze. "Hydra?" At that, he shoved himself for the elevator. "Common floor, JARVIS!"

"Right away, Sir."

Tony bit nervously at his nail before scowling and jerking his hand down. Forcing a deep breath, he ran his hands through his hair and winced when he felt that they were still slick with oil. The moment the elevator doors opened, he said, "I need a towel!"

Bruce blinked from his spot at the kitchen, stirring a cup of tea. "Um, okay." He opened a drawer and tossed a hand-towel over.

Tony wiped his hands clean and moved towards where Steve and Sam were gathered. He frowned at the large metal box. "Uh . . . has USPS changed the types of boxes they deliver?"

"USPS didn't deliver it," Steve said, glancing at him. "It was on the kitchen table in my suite when I came back from my run."

Tony frowned. "Someone got in the building? J?"

"None of my alarms or security measures were tripped," the AI responded.

"None— Alright." He groaned. "And why do you think it's Hydra?"

Steve held out a gift tag. "This was attached to it."

Tony frowned at the back of the gift tag. "People actually do presents on St. Patrick's Day?" he asked, pointing at the shamrock.

"Tony," Steve said warningly. "Trust me. You're . . . gonna want to look at the other side.

Tony flipped it over. And froze.

_To: Tin Can_

_From: Goose, courtesy of Red Head_

"I . . . ." He wet his lips. "Goose is what Rhodey calls Dani," he rasped.

"I know," Steve said softly. "Tin Can is, well, you, I guess. She's called you that before, right?" He waited for Tony's nod before continuing. "And Red Head? Red Skull."

Tony looked down at the box. "This box was handmade so that it couldn't be opened easily. I— Dani built this."

Steve frowned. "You sure?"

"Positive. I— Get it down to my workshop. We'll crack it.”

* * *

 

"Winter," she whispered. "Winter, are you awake?"

He groaned but didn't look up, still face down on his pillow. "I am now. Turn off the lamp, wouldja?"

"Um, I would, I just—"

"Nightmares?" Now, he did look up. He studied her shaky demeanor for a second before nodding and shifting to the side.

Danielle smiled gratefully and turned off the lamp. She lifted the edge of his blanket and slid under it. A cold metal arm came around around her bare middle and his thumb started drawing circles on her ribs. "Talk," he ordered.

She shuddered and curled into his hold. "I, uh. Strucker had me. Branded me again for trying to escape a second time."

His hand moved to feel the burn, sliding under her bra strap in order to put proper pressure on the scar. "He won't get you again. I promised, remember? You're fine."

Danielle turned over and ran her fingers up his arm, up the machine she'd put together, and paused at the intersection of flesh and metal. She pressed her fingers in there. "Hey, Winter?"

"Hmm?"

"After Hydra is gone, after we've gotten rid of all the bases, what . . . what are we going to do then?"

He frowned and closed his eyes, turning the question over and over in his head. Then he pulled her closed and tucked her under his chin. "By then," he murmured, "I'm hoping you'll feel confident enough to go home."

Danielle squeezed her eyes shut and tried her best to pretend she didn't feel the tears sneaking out. She was silently grateful that he didn't say anything as they soaked into his neck. "I am home," she whispered.

* * *

 

"This is Dani's handwriting."

Natasha looked up from the page she was reading. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure!" Tony snapped. She offered him a flat look and held out her hand. He sighed and handed the paper over. "Sorry," he mumbled.

She took it and studied the note in the margin of the paper. "It is hers. Confirmed, then, Goose is Danielle. Which means she's made it out of Hydra."

"But then why isn't she _here,"_ Tony hissed. "And how did she get the files anyway."

"She's not alone." Clint snatched the paper from Natasha and compared it to the one he was reading. "The handwriting on this one is different. Someone else was reviewing these with her. Tasha?"

She took the papers from him and the magnifying glass Bruce offered. "Male handwriting," she murmured. "But whoever it is, if it's even one person, writes in several different languages. Handwriting shifts so much from language to language that I'm not sure if it's one person or twelve. But Danielle is definitely not alone."

"The question, then, is who is with her?”

* * *

 

It was the dangerous change in his breathing that alerted her sensitive hearing that something was wrong. Danielle awoke, eyes still closed, and listened to Bucky's heavy, disturbed attempts at getting air. It was the sound of his metal hand creaking that threw her into action. Danielle rolled up out of her bed and lunged across to his.

"Winter? Winter! Look at me, look at me. Пожалуйста, посмотрите на меня." [Please look at me.]

He froze and went still. Absolutely still. Danielle leaned over and turned on the lamp before rising back up on her knees to look down at him. She reached over towards his left arm and worked his fingers away from where they were denting his palm. He groaned a little. When she looked back up at him, he was opening his eyes.

"Nell?"

She grinned down at him. "There you are. Where'd you go?"

"Um . . . ." With a pained moan, he pushed himself up and brought his hand to his head. "Sri Lanka, I think. 1988."

"Hmm, that doesn't sound like a nice year. I like this year better."

"What year is that?" he asked, pushing his fingers harshly against his temples.

"2014. We're doing recon on a Hydra base in Fortaleza, Brazil. This will be our fifth Hydra base takedown. My name's Danielle Stark. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. Last night, we ordered nineteen pizzas between the two of us and we were still hungry so we got some Chinese delivered as well. You follow?"

He nodded, eyes screwed shut.

"You with me?"

"My head just aches," he rasped.

Danielle reached up and gently nudged his hands away. She massaged his temples. "You trust me, right?" When he nodded, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the Tesseract energy and circulating it through her fingers. A few seconds later, Bucky groaned in relief and his arms came around her. She squeaked as he dragged her closer so that he could rest his forehead on her shoulder. "Better?" she asked quietly, adjusting so she could press her fingers against the back of his head and keep the energy up.

"Yes," he murmured. "Thank you.”

* * *

 

"Five deliveries," Tony hissed. "Five! Five in as many months and we don't know how they're getting inside the building," —he started listing off on his fingers— "we don't know how the information is being gathered, we don't know who it is running around with Danielle, and speaking of Danielle, we still don't know where my daughter is!"

"Tony," Steve said, frowning down at the familiar metal, gift tagged box. "Panicking isn't going to help the situation."

"I am not panicking!"

"You are, Tony," Natasha said, crouching in front of the box and studying the gift tag. "Breathe. Also, Danielle isn't the one that wrote this tag. Our unidentified male is. Same words, though."

"What? Oh, god, oh, god. He's trying to cover up that he killed her. Oh, god—"

"Tony!" Natasha snapped, looking up. "He didn't kill her. She's still alive. Whoever this person is, he's smart, otherwise he wouldn't be able to keep up with the deductions Danielle is making in her notes. So obviously he'd know that we can tell the handwriting is different. Now sit down and remind yourself to _breathe."_

Tony dropped down to the floor and dropped his head into his hands. Steve watched him worriedly and exchanged a glance with Natasha. _Coffee,_ she mouthed. His shoulders slumped with relief at a way to help and he hurried away to the elevator.

Natasha took the blowtorch and got to work. "Tony," she said softly, "Danielle's a smart girl. She's gotten away from Hydra and, from what we're seeing, it looks like she's getting back at them too. She's okay."

"You don't know that."

"No. No, I don’t."

* * *

 

She woke up on the ceiling again. Danielle caught her breath and steadied the Tesseract energy keeping her up. "W-winter?" she called.

She heard a grumbled and was able to turn her head enough to see his dark form shifting out from under his covers. He reached over and turned the lamp on. Then he froze. "What the hell?"

"Uh, I, I'm not sure how to get down."

"What are you doing?" he demanded, scrambling up from his bed.

"I think I'm levitating, though correct me if I'm wrong and dear god I've never been scared of heights but I _am_ scared of not knowing what's going on, so _get me down."_


	23. Out of the storm (you won't be the same)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from Kafka of the Shore by Haruki Murakami.  
> This is the conclusion of Part 2 of the Erstwhile Universe: Five for Silver, Six for Hell. Keep an eye out for Part 3, coming soon!

"They changed the goddamn security," she hissed. "They caught on to us and now we're gonna have to regroup on how to wipe 'em out."

"There's got to be a way in," Bucky murmured, watching as they carried another body in. "They're still collecting the dead bodies of the weird people."

"Weird— For the love of— Just say mutants. Or inhumans. Or literally anything else. They may be dead, but they deserve some modicum of—" Danielle trailed off, blinking. "Oh. I've got it."

Bucky turned to her, frowning. "What?"

"They're taking dead bodies in." Her eyes went wide. "That's how we get in. Or, not _we,_ but me. Winter, the bodies go into storage until they can dissect them. It's not like they take them in and cut into them right away. There's a resting period and—"

"What are you saying?"

She licked her lips. "Do you— Trojan Horse. You know what that means, right?" When he nodded, brow still creased, she pressed on. "The longest it ever took me to come back was eighty-seven minutes and seven seconds."

And then his eyes were wide and he lunged forward to grab her by her shoulders and shake her. "No," he hissed. "Absolutely not. Are you _crazy?"_

"I have been called that. I—"

"No. Nell, I'm not going to risk you not coming back. There's—"

"Risk? There's no risk." She shoved his hands off of her. "Strucker might be insane, but he follows a scientific process and nowhere in that scientific process did I _ever_ fail to come back."

He swallowed thickly and glanced to the side. Bucky shook his head. "No, I— No."

"I'll come back."

"I . . . I know. But Nell, please. No."

She eyed him for a long, long moment. "Hey, Winter," she murmured. "What if we made a deal?" She waited until he looked at her again before she continued. "We Trojan Horse this son of a bitch and then . . . we go see my dad. That's what you want me to do, right?"

He nodded.

"Good. Well, what _I_ want to do is stop these savages from ripping apart the bodies of innocents just because they think they can find some sort of secret power. It's a disgrace to the dead and just an example of how sick in the head these people are. So, do we have a deal?"

He stared at her for a long moment. Then he thumbed the grip of his gun. "How do you want it?”

* * *

 

Danielle came back to life in total darkness. Gasping for air, she reached up and felt for the new, blood-caked bullet scar on the right side of her head. Then she shifted on the metal she was on and twisted, feeling around until her fingers closed on the spent bullet beside her, forced out of her head by the Tesseract. She breathed a sigh of relief. "See, Winter," she whispered. "Told you I'd be okay."

She reached up and pressed her hands against cold metal. She felt the latch and paused, listening for a long moment. Satisfied that she didn't hear any talking, breathing, or heartbeats, she pushed out the Tesseract energy and moved the lever. The door clicked and swung open. Danielle braced her hands against the outside and pushed and her tray slid out.

Wrinkling her nose at the blanket covering her bare body, she was very happy she'd left everything but her clothes with Bucky. She threw the blanket aside and sat up. After ripping off her toe tag, she pushed herself to her feet and closed her tray again. The moment she heard the lock click, she also heard footsteps. Danielle flickered across the room so she was standing just behind the door and would be hidden by it when it opened.

One heartbeat, steady. One set of footsteps, high heels. One opponent, non-fighter.

The door opened and Danielle caught her breath. A woman in a lab coat stepped in, focused on her clipboard. The door closed. Danielle flickered forward and nailed the woman in the back of the head. She dropped. Danielle tilted her head to the side, considering her. "Better than nothing." She bent down and began working the woman out of her clothes.

As she slipped into the pantsuit that was just a touch too small, she tilted her head and considered the clipboard. Names, with numbers coordinating to the drawers they were in. Shaking her head, Danielle snatched the paper from the clipboard and tucked it away in her pocket. "Nice heels," she mused. "Not really good for fighting in."

Barefoot, she stepped to the door and cracked it a little to listen. Three in the hall, all male, in discussion. She took a deep breath. And then she flickered out.

The moment she appeared in the middle of their circle, the agents reached for their guns. Danielle elbowed the one to her left in the face and his head slammed into the wall. Then she grabbed the other two with the Tesseract and threw them to the floor. A kick to the face silenced the first of those two, but the second scrambled for the gun he'd dropped. Danielle stomped her foot down on his wrist and felt something give. "Not so fast." She stooped down and retrieved his gun. "I think I'll take this."

She tucked it into her waistband and then snapped the man's neck. Danielle snatched up the other guns and glanced around the corner. It took her a moment to orient where she was in the layout of the building. She closed her eyes and thought of the map she and Bucky had made, tracing her way to the security room. Then she nodded to herself.

Danielle flickered down the hallway and two shots and a pistol whip to the head, followed by an elbow to the spine, took care of the agents in her way. Four more flickers, eleven more downed opponents, and she found herself in front of the door she wanted. Danielle kicked it open with a yell, though the yell was more for the splinters digging into her heel than anything else. The people inside shot up from their chairs, but two shots from the guns she was holding and three more from the one in her waistband took them out.

She closed the door with her foot. "Let's see what we have here," she murmured, eying the computers. "Ah, perfect." She pressed several keys and the alarm started blaring. And then a few more keys and a couple passcodes started the lockdown. Danielle stooped and started retrieving more guns.

The door opened. "You're not supposed to be in here."

Danielle looked up and grinned at the blindsided man in glasses standing there, clutching a half-crushed cup of coffee. "Astute. Truly." She shot him through the head. And then she took off at a run.

She flickered past two doors as they slammed down and slid under the third. As she approached the front door, she shot one more agent and tucked the gun away, hissing as it burned her skin. She clapped her hands together and they sparked blue as she burned them apart. "Hey, batter batter," she muttered. And then she pitched.

The energy slammed into the front and it exploded outward, wall and door and all.

Danielle turned and planted herself, palming two guns and grinning as she heard the agents approaching. The front three dropped before she even moved. Danielle glanced back at the figure standing in the distance. She grinned and threw herself into the fray.

* * *

 

"Let me see."

"I'm fine."

"Nell."

She sighed and sat up, folding her legs under herself. "I thought I was supposed to be getting some sleep. You don't expect me to make it through tomorrow on an empty sleep tank, do you?"

He rolled his eyes and sat down next to her. His hands came up to support her head, keeping her still. His left hand moved and she shivered as cold metal brushed over her newest scar. "I'm fine," she said again, this time softer. "I told you I'd come back."

"You did," he murmured. "But I am never doing that again. Promise you'll never make me do that again."

She watched him for a long moment. Then she closed her eyes and pressed into his hand and whispered, "I promise.”

* * *

 

"Tony, you need to eat something. If Danielle is going to come home, don't you think she deserves to come home to her father? Alive and well?"

"I'm fine, Natasha," Tony murmured, frowning as he read through a file from drop-off number three for the fortieth time. "Let me get this done."

"Sir—"

"Not you too, J."

"Sir, you have received an encrypted email from a blocked account. I've decrypted it and discovered that it is signed at the end with the moniker 'Goose.'"

Tony dropped the papers. "Display," he croaked. He licked his dry, cracked lips and watched as the screen projected itself in front of him. Next to him, Natasha turned as well to read the email.

_18˚33'08.9"N 75˚01'05.3"E_

_Come and get us._

_—Goose_


End file.
